How First Baptist Church Trussville closes its books faster with BILL

Ashley Crane is the sole accountant for a 200-year-old church with roughly 100 employees, a preschool, summer camps, mission trips, and a capital campaign under construction outside her window. But the church's financial operations weren't keeping up with its growth.

"Our process was very long," Crane says. "Each person would enter their credit card transactions into Sage as a separate check request. Then we'd have to go through every single one, reconcile it back to the statement, and fix any mistakes. That was rough."

That's why First Baptist Church Trussville turned to BILL Spend & Expense.

Challenge: Every transaction entered by hand, reports two months behind

For years, First Baptist Church Trussville ran its credit card process the way many organizations do: wait for the statement, then enter every transaction one by one. For a sole accountant, that process could be overwhelming.

"I couldn't check all of the check requests. I just didn't have time," she says. "So transactions would get posted to Sage, and then I'd have to go back and do journal entries to move things to the right accounts."

The church would pay its credit card bill in one month and not see the data until the next, leaving leadership waiting for financial reports.

"With our previous process, I'd have to tell people, 'You've got to wait two months,'" Crane says. "We just couldn't get the numbers to them any faster."

Those delays cost the church in other ways, too. "We had a lot of issues with people losing receipts," she says. "They wouldn't enter them until they got the statement, and by then, the receipts were gone."

Solution: Amounts that auto-populate, books that close semi-monthly

Crane moved the church onto BILL Spend & Expense, giving their staff members both physical and virtual cards that capture each transaction the moment a purchase is made.

"We were blown away," she says. "The vendor and the amount just show up in BILL. Everyone codes their transactions. We do a semi-monthly close, import it into Sage, and it's done."

The shift to using BILL Divvy Cards eliminated the manual data entry that had consumed Crane's time. "With BILL, you don't have to enter the amounts," she says. "That eliminates human error, and that's huge for us."

That speed and flexibility matter for the church’s volunteer ministry. Even non-employees can be set up in minutes.

"We have people who aren't employees, like church members going on a mission trip, who need a card," Crane says. "With BILL, it's easy to order a new card or add funds to a ministry card right there."

The BILL mobile app solved the receipt problem, too. "The transaction automatically pops up in BILL on their phone," Crane says. "They just take a picture, and that's it."

The results: From two months behind to semi-monthly closes

Where church leadership used to wait months for financial reports, Crane now delivers them about every two weeks.

"We close semi-monthly now, so I can get numbers to leadership in real time," she says. "If they want to know how we did on summer camp, I can get that information to them right away. Before BILL, they would have had to wait two months."*

The accuracy gains are just as significant. "Since the transactions are already coded, I can just export from BILL and check them before they go into Sage. When the data gets there, it's already correct. I'm not doing journal entries to move things around anymore."

When Crane describes BILL in one word, she picks one that resonates across every finance team. "Efficient. BILL has eliminated a lot of time for us," Crane says. "It saves time for everyone, not just me."

Looking ahead

First Baptist Church Trussville is in the middle of a capital campaign to build a new middle school space, with summer camps, VBS, children's camp, and mission trips all on the horizon. As spending grows more complex, Crane is leaning on the budget feature in BILL Spend & Expense to keep coding simple.

"We can create budgets for each event. When someone uses that budget, the transaction is automatically coded," she says. "I love that."

It's the kind of operational discipline that lets a one-person accounting team keep pace with a growing church, and it's why Crane keeps finding new ways to move spend into BILL.

"The less time I spend chasing transactions, the more time I have to make sure everything is right," she says. "That's what matters."

^{1 Based on First Baptist Church Trussville experience using BILL Spend & Expense as of April 2026. Results are not guaranteed and may vary by organization.}

^{2 The BILL Divvy Card may be issued by one of Divvy Pay, LLC's bank partners (bill.com/bank-partners). The BILL Divvy Card is not a deposit product. For your specific lender, see your Card Agreement. Credit lines and the advertised range are not guaranteed and will be determined upon application approval.}