When we work with church plants we tell them to budget quarterly instead of annually.
Three reasons I would budget quarterly:
1. Change happens quickly in a church plant; be ready to change.
2. Income projections are basically a pure guess early on. The shorter the budget, the better the projecting will be.
3. Annual budgets are difficult to abide by. Create 90 day objectives and celebrate your budget wins and correct your losses.
Seven budgeting tips for church plants:
1. Overestimate your expenses
2. Underestimate your income
3. ALWAYS save something
4. ALWAYS give something
5. Make ONE person in charge of the budget being correct every month (it must be clear who is in charge of it!)
6. Don’t have a Miscellaneous category in your budget (it’s a black hole)
7. Make your budget SIMPLE
8. Quit whining that it is too hard and work on it 
Let The Change Group do your bookkeeping so you don’t have to worry with it. Click here and we will help you.
What is your best church plant budgeting tip?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!
This is such a great idea! The difficulty is getting churches to try something new and different. Even new church get stuck in doing things the same way they have always done them. Great advice!
solid!
BAM! Church planters pay attention! The “how much do we have? OK lets spend that on this” budget system will not sustain itself and give you more problems down the road than you ever bargained for.
I’m a church planter in Syracuse, NY. Great advice! I have budget on the mind and was wondering about “better” ways to do it. This is better than traditional. I’ve even wondered if a “yearly” budget is the best for established churches since we are so dependent upon donations.
I’m church planting the London. At the moment the mother church is still doing this stuff for us. Thinking recently about where to start with doing this ourselves. This is great advice thank you very much.