Once Upon Internal Control - A tale of good and bad ways to implement internal controls in a local church

A short fable about one church that set up good financial procedures and one that did not. The first suffered from a serious fraud and the second was protected from false accusations. Concludes with quick survey of lessons learned from both churches. More

Once upon a time, there were two churches.

One did not pay attention to putting in place good procedures. They will pay a sad price for the lack of internal controls.

Another church develops some good procedures, which prevent those troubles. They also are safe when attacked by anonymous accusations.

You may be thinking, “why should we bother with all that internal control stuff in our local church? After all, our finance staff is very good at what they do. We trust them completely.”

Through two simple stories, this fable shows why that is not enough. We should bother to set up good procedures to protect our churches, our staff, and ourselves.

Intentionally short so the book can easily be read in one sitting.