Friday, January 4, 2019
Hey Fletch … Do you have any policies or procedures which outline appropriate spending? Our SP has a credit card but we haven’t ever put limits on spending. We are currently running with zero guidelines. This is dangerous for us all! I found a couple of good snippets in the Employee Handbook of Christ Community Church on XPastor regarding appropriate expenses for rental cars, hotels, flights … but wanted to see if you had anything else.
DRF—I would back up the car a bit on the spending issue. The place to start is in the budgeting process. You want a budget for a ministry area, in this case for the SP, that lays out expected expenses for a variety of things. You might include:
- Business meals
- Resource materials
- Honorariums for guest speakers
- Conferences
- Travel
- Staff Development
These are just samples of what could be included. The budget becomes the policy for the coming fiscal year of what funds will be spent on, including total amounts.
In this way you can monitor expenses, such as whether the SP or other staff member goes to one expensive conference or several less expensive ones.
