Objectives: These course gives necessary skills to effective manage ecclesial financial transactions and its recordings. The obtained knowledge will improve the quality of understanding financial statements to give a true and fair view. This will ease the communication with confidence at all levels.

Accounts- Payable, Receivable, Cash- and Bank Cycles are covered in details handling receipts, recording the transactions, its money flows and reconciliations. In the Budgeting Process, “hands-on” experiences will be presented to the students - how to prepare an operating budget and how to analyze it. Examples give an insight of the effective use of controls over financial statements and statutory regulations effecting accounting processes.

 Learning outcomes: The course will enable students …

-  to handle financial data and documents in a structured manner,

-  to understand the fair statement of transactions,

-  to prepare a budget and report income,

-  to analyze its financial performance and

-  to understand the application of minimum controls over financial reporting.

 Contents: This course introduces students to understand ecclesial finance in accordance to the core principles of the Code of Canon Law. It covers ecclesial business models and the purpose of financial statements.

·  Accounting Basics

o  Introduction to accounting

o  Principles of accounting for managing ecclesiastical units (understanding the business model)

o  Canonical regulations for administering “The Temporal Goods of the Church”

·  Financial Statements

o  Overview of financial statements

o  Understanding the balance sheet and the accounting equations

o  Understanding financial statements and how to read it

o  Transactions behind balance sheet and income statement

·  Preparing and Handling of Data

o  Journalizing financial transactions

o  Recording of transactions (petty cash, bank, credit cards)

o  Maintenance accounts on a cash basis and under double entry system

o  Archiving vouchers, receipts, invoices and other source documentation

·  Budgeting Process:

o  Role/purpose of budgeting in management

o  Budget types: Advantages / disadvantages

o  Content of budgeting

·    Management Controls

o  Internal and external controls (incl. audits)

o  Minimum internal controls over payments and income

o  Reconciliation controls (bank reconciliations)

 Methodology: The course will be provided through frontal lectures and interactive discussions. Students are required to read the assigned materials prior to the lectures and complete practical examples as homework. The homework is corrected together in class and not individually. The students have the opportunity to resubmit the corrected homework. At interim the progress of the group case study is presented in class. The use of a computer (MS Excel, Libre Office Calc) and/or calculator (no smart phone calculators) is recommended.

 Means of evaluation:

The grade will be determined by the relative performance of the following components:

-  Attendance and participation (30%)

-  Homework (individual incl. corrections) (20%)

-  Group case study / Paper and presentation (20%)

-  Final exam (30%)