How Gateway Fellowship sees, manages, and controls expenses at scale
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About Gateway Fellowship
Gateway Fellowship Church was challenged with managing expenses at multiple locations. Key volunteer leaders were spearheading new church locations and needed access to funds to cover expenses for set up. PEX Visa® Prepaid Cards and PEX Disburse Visa® Prepaid Cards offered a streamlined way to manage expenses as well as communicate and set budget expectations.
“We can load $100 to the [PEX] card and then not have to think about it again until the end of the month. Then all we need to do is make sure we have the receipts uploaded and check it against our accounting system.”
Josh Brannon, Executive Director of Operations
The challenge
As Gateway Fellowship Church grew, their main challenge was managing expenses at multiple locations. Credit cards were used and distributed to staff positions but this method hit a roadblock with the church planting process. Key volunteer leaders were spearheading the new church locations and needed access to funds to cover expenses for set up. Since they were not technically church staff, it became a difficult procedure to manage how people can get money. “We don’t want people using someone else’s card so when you’re trying to delegate responsibility and have people lead key areas then they will either have to use their own money and get reimbursed or have to request a cash advance or get some petty cash.”
This also created a headache when it came to reporting and reconciliation time. As Josh says, “We’ve had frustration with workarounds we needed to create based off our credit card transactions and not being able to do everything we wanted in one place. The team was spending too much time and resources to create workarounds to make up for what the reporting system lacks.”
The solution
Setting up PEX cards at Gateway proved to be a smooth transition as volunteers welcomed the more streamlined way to track expenses. As Josh says, “Using PEX with our team leads has been great because you are able to communicate in advance and set expectations such as what the budget – how much we are allocating each month or week. This way everyone is in the know and it’s not a guessing game.” Reporting was also simplified as funds were easily trackable since teams were able to request funds from the app as needed. Josh explains, “We can load $100 to the [PEX] card and then not have to think about it again until the end of the month. Then all we need to do is make sure we have the receipts uploaded and check it against our accounting system.”
For Josh and Gateway Fellowship Church, the transition to PEX has empowered its team leaders to make key decisions during the church planting process. PEX cards provided a valuable resource that fit the needs of a modern, growing church allowing for a more streamlined delegation of responsibilities and expense management.
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