Church Admin Corner: Financial Records

Last week, we talked about parish registers and their importance. The next two weeks will continue with some other important parish records and how long to retain them.

For this week, we will focus on financial records. Financial records, including bank statements, records of income and expenditures, offering envelopes, and tax receipts, should be held by the parish for a period of seven years. It is recommended that, at the end of a fiscal year, all financial records from the previous year should be boxed up together. That box should then be clearly labeled with the year of the contents and the year it should be destroyed (items from 2025 should be destroyed at the end of 2032 or in 2033). Records to be destroyed should be shredded so as not to discard private financial information of the parish or parishioners.

Annual financial statements should be retained and archived. But, as these statements are included with parish Annual Meeting packages, those meeting packages are the important piece for retention.

If you still have offering envelopes, bank statements, and cheque stubs from 2018 or before, this summer would be a great time to shred them.

If you have any questions about specific records and whether they should be kept, destroyed, or archived, please do not hesitate to contact the Synod Office at churched@edmonton.anglican.ca.