Annual Review Document:
Drawing Financial Conclusions

The third section of the Annual Review Document, Financial Conclusions, provides a framework for drawing out conclusions from the financial raw data reported within Section 2.

• Guidance for completing this section can be found on the Financial Conclusions page of this site. The focus, within an Annual Review, is on the running costs of the church and its ministry. It is important to exclude one off capital appeals and those items that do not represent routine church life (e.g. a large insurance claim).
• Take time to fully discuss and understand the figures. Try to explore the trends that they point to. This exercise is important in identifying specific areas that may need to be directly addressed, as part of the Annual Review. For example, the need to move givers to standing orders because of a highly variable Sunday attendance that makes the church's cash flow unpredictable.
• The conclusions drawn from the figures should be written back into the draft of Section 1 of the Annual Review Document