Should the treasurer be a paid staff role or a volunteer?

At a church of 60 to 250 people, it is almost always a volunteer, sometimes with a small stipend for the hours involved. What matters more than pay is that the role is written down and reviewed once a year, so it does not quietly become whatever the current person is comfortable doing.

Can the treasurer also be the counter or the check signer?

Not both, and ideally not either alone. The treasurer can reconcile and report, but the safest structure has at least one other person involved in counting Sunday's offering and a second signature on checks above a set amount. This is not about distrust — it protects the treasurer as much as the church.

Does the treasurer need accounting experience?

No. Someone comfortable with a spreadsheet, careful about deadlines, and willing to ask when something looks off can do this well. What the role needs more than credentials is consistency — the same person, or a clean handoff, showing up on the same schedule every month.

What happens when the treasurer resigns with no notice?

This is the scenario the written job description exists to prevent. If the giving records, the login credentials, and the current bank balance all live in one person's head, a sudden departure can cost weeks of reconstruction. A short handoff checklist, reviewed annually, is cheap insurance against an expensive problem.

A church treasurer job description for small churches

Q: How much time does this role actually take each month?

For a church of 60 to 250 people with a few dozen giving households, plan on four to eight hours a month: entering and reconciling giving, paying recurring bills, and a short report to the board. Budget season and January statements add a few extra hours those two months.

Most small churches do not have a treasurer job description. They have a treasurer — usually a retired accountant, a careful spreadsheet person, or whoever raised a hand three years ago — and an unspoken understanding of what that person does. That works fine until it does not: until the treasurer moves, or gets sick, or simply burns out from carrying a job nobody ever wrote down.

Below is a job description you can hand to a new volunteer treasurer this week, adapted to your church in about twenty minutes. It is not a legal document and it is not exhaustive. It is a starting point that turns an assumed role into a written one, so the next person does not have to reverse-engineer the job from whatever the last person happened to do.

Why write this down at all

A church board that has never lost a treasurer does not feel the need for this document. A church board that has lost one — mid-year, with no notice, with the online banking password known only to them — never wants to be in that spot again. The job description is cheap insurance. It costs an hour to write and saves weeks of reconstruction later.

It also protects the treasurer. Without a written scope, the role tends to expand: first it is giving records, then it is the budget, then it is fielding every “can we afford this” question from every ministry leader. A defined job description gives the treasurer something to point to when asked to do more than the role was meant to hold.

Core responsibilities

Adapt this list to your church's size and structure, but most of it will apply almost anywhere in the 60–250 range.

Record and reconcile giving. Enter contributions promptly, by envelope, check, or however they arrive, and reconcile recorded giving against bank deposits each month.
Pay recurring bills. Utilities, insurance, payroll if the church has staff, and any standing commitments — on time, with a paper trail.
Maintain the bank accounts. Keep signers current, reconcile statements monthly, and flag anything unusual to the board rather than resolving it alone.
Report to the board. A short monthly summary — balance, giving trend, notable expenses — not a full audit every time, but enough that the board is never surprised.
Support the budget process. Provide actual numbers when the board or a budget committee builds next year's plan. The treasurer supplies the data; the board makes the decisions.
Produce year-end giving statements. Every contributing household needs a statement for tax purposes, and it needs to go out promptly in January, not whenever there is time.
Flag giving trends, gently. If giving is trending down three months running, or a giving goal is badly off pace, that belongs in front of the board before it becomes a budget crisis.

A church tracking giving in a system built for it — rather than a personal spreadsheet only the treasurer can open — has an easier time here, and an easier handoff when the role changes hands. The guide on tracking giving that respects the giver covers what that looks like in practice, and year-end giving statements walks through the January crunch in more detail.

What the treasurer should not do alone

The healthiest version of this role has built-in checks, not because anyone suspects the treasurer, but because no one person should be the only line of defense around church money. A few boundaries worth writing into the job description itself:

Do not count the offering alone. At least two people, neither of whom is the treasurer, should count and record Sunday's total before it reaches the books.
Do not sign checks alone above a threshold. Pick a number that fits your budget — $500, $1,000, whatever feels right — and require a second signature above it.
Do not hold the only copy of anything. Bank access, giving records, and passwords should be recoverable by the board even if the treasurer is unreachable.
Do not approve their own reimbursements. A second person signs off, even if it is a small amount and even if it is obviously legitimate.

None of this is about mistrust. It is the same reason pastors do not counsel alone behind closed doors: a boundary that protects everyone, including the person inside it.

A month in the life of the role

A concrete rhythm is more useful than an abstract list of duties. Here is roughly what a month looks like for a treasurer at a church of, say, 150 people with 40 giving households.

Weekly: enter the week's giving after it has been counted by someone else, usually 20–30 minutes.
Monthly: reconcile the bank statement, pay recurring bills, and write a short report for the board meeting — another two to three hours.
Quarterly: check giving against the annual goal and flag anything trending the wrong way.
Annually: produce year-end statements in January, and support the budget committee in the fall.

That adds up to four to eight hours most months, more in January and budget season. Writing that estimate into the job description helps a new volunteer say yes with a realistic sense of what they are taking on, rather than discovering the true time cost three months in.

The handoff checklist

The single most useful thing a job description can do is make the next transition boring instead of a crisis. Keep a short, current list of:

Where the accounting records live and who else can access them.
Current bank balance and account numbers, plus who the signers are.
Recurring bills and their due dates.
Login credentials for any giving or accounting software, stored somewhere the board can reach without the treasurer.
The name of a second person who could step in temporarily if needed.

Review this list once a year, whether or not anyone is leaving. A church that keeps giving records in a system rather than a personal file makes this checklist mostly automatic — the records outlive the person who entered them. SundayBridge keeps giving, statements, and reports in one place a board can hand to whoever takes the role next, without the outgoing treasurer having to reconstruct anything from memory.

Fitting the role to your church's size

A church of 60 looks different from a church of 250, even inside the same job title. At the smaller end, the treasurer might be one of two or three people who touch church administration at all, and the role can blur into general bookkeeping: paying the electric bill, ordering communion supplies, whatever needs a check written. At the larger end, there is often enough volume — more giving households, more recurring bills, maybe a part-time staff payroll — that the treasurer works alongside a small finance committee rather than reporting solo to the full board, and the giving records alone can take real hours each week to keep current.

The pastor's role in this also shifts with size. At 60 people, the pastor may glance at the bank balance directly. At 250, that same pastor is more likely reading a summary the treasurer prepared, which means the summary itself needs to be trustworthy without a line-by-line audit every month. Either way, the treasurer's job is the same: keep the numbers honest and put them in front of the people who need to see them, on a schedule they can count on.

Either way, the core job description above holds. What changes is the time commitment and how much gets delegated to others: a counting team, a finance committee, a part-time bookkeeper for payroll. Write the delegation into the description too, so the treasurer's actual scope is clear rather than assumed.

If your church is still tracking any of this in a personal spreadsheet, the treasurer transition is exactly the moment that tends to expose it. The guide on moving your church off spreadsheets and the one on choosing church management software are both useful reading before you hand this role to someone new.

A short version you can adapt today

If you need something to put in front of the board this week, here is a compressed version:

Church treasurer — volunteer role, approximately 4–8 hours per month. Responsible for recording and reconciling giving, paying recurring bills, maintaining bank accounts with proper signers, producing a monthly report for the board, supporting the annual budget process, and generating year-end giving statements. Does not count the offering alone or sign checks above [amount] without a second signature. Maintains a current handoff document covering records access, account details, and recurring obligations, reviewed annually with the board.

Fill in the bracket, adjust the hours, and it is ready to hand to whoever takes on the role next — including the version of you that has been doing it unofficially for the last three years.