A 50-year-old church and school in Orlando moved budgeting out of the finance office and into the hands of its ministry leaders with Martus and NetSuite.
Organization
Faith Church Orlando
Church and school, Orlando, Florida. NetSuite.
Challenge
High-level budgeting left department leaders with limited visibility into their resources.
Solution
Departmental budgeting and self-service reporting in Martus, integrated with NetSuite.
Result
Growing budget ownership across the church and school, with fewer reporting bottlenecks for finance.
Faith Church Orlando is a church and school that has served its community for about 50 years, with ministries that now span multiple campuses. Chris McCracken, Chief Financial Officer, leads finance, IT, and HR. For most of its history, the organization budgeted at a macro level in ACS, and department leaders had little visibility into what they could spend. Today, the finance team works in NetSuite, while leaders across the church and school use Martus to plan and track their own budgets.
Website: faithchurchorlando.com
When Faith Church set out to build line-item departmental budgets, it was taking on something the organization had not done in its 50-year history. Department leaders relied largely on prior-year spending to guide their decisions, and additional investment required a conversation with senior leadership.
As those conversations began, a recurring response revealed the gap between responsibility for a ministry and visibility into its finances: “I had no idea how much money I had to spend.” Leaders needed enough context to develop their plans, understand where they stood against budget, and explain the choices behind their spending.
Historical reporting also stayed centralized in finance. A routine question about last year’s spending meant asking the finance team to pull the numbers. The team wanted a budgeting process that gave leaders direct access to those answers and a real role in deciding how resources are allocated.
Martus wasn’t new to Faith Church’s finance leadership. Chris had implemented it alongside Sage Intacct at another church, so the team knew what it could do for ministry leaders. The next requirement was connecting Martus with Faith Church’s NetSuite accounting environment.
Before Martus integrated with NetSuite, the team used a separate FP&A tool for a year. It was costly, complicated, and never designed for the broader group of leaders they wanted to involve. When the NetSuite integration launched, it brought them back to Martus, which Chris describes as “like home sweet home to a certain degree.”
The fit depended on serving both finance and department leaders. Finance needed detailed information for analysis and oversight, while pastors, teachers, and other budget owners needed an accessible way to engage with their numbers. Martus supports that shared process without requiring every participant to become a finance specialist.
NetSuite remains the finance team’s accounting system, while leaders across Faith Church’s campuses and school work with their budgets in Martus. That split gives department leaders visibility into the details of their own areas and a place to take part in planning.
The finance team organizes budget conversations around four simple questions, each tied to a part of the financial structure:
The questions give that structure a ministry purpose. Leaders consider what they intend to accomplish with each allocation and how it supports their priorities.
Budget workshops start with what leaders believe God is asking them to do, then work through how to resource those plans. Martus gives them a financial picture they can see and work with, so their ideas become allocations they can examine, discuss, and revisit as ministry unfolds.
Visibility also changes what accountability looks like. Leaders can question an expense, flag a coding issue, or ask to move budget between categories. The finance team approaches those conversations with grace, focused on understanding what happened rather than assigning blame. The numbers become a starting point for talking about the ministry behind them.
Results at a glance
Growing budget ownership shows up in the questions leaders now ask. One leader who needed historical budget information asked the finance team to teach them how to find it. Rising demand for Martus access points the same way: more leaders want a direct view of their numbers.
Getting here took real work. The finance team carried a heavy lift to build the structure, clean up codes, and walk leaders through a new approach to budgeting. That effort removed a recurring bottleneck: finance no longer prepares routine historical reports because leaders can now pull that information themselves. The team’s time now goes to the budget itself, resolving coding questions, moving budget between categories, and helping leaders see how resources line up with their plans. The work didn’t disappear. It changed for the better.
The connection between budgeting and mission became tangible when Faith Church reviewed a recurring event. Martus helped the team bring together the program’s costs and weigh that investment against participation and ministry priorities. With a new campus launched and a building planned, leaders had a concrete basis for comparing the event with the resources the next stage of ministry would need.
The decision came down to one question: “Is it what we’re called to do next year, with that level of investment? Or are we going to take those dollars and reinvest them into something else?”
Faith Church chose to retire the event and redirect those resources toward the new campus. It was a ministry win made possible by clear numbers and a leadership team willing to make a hard call, making room for a new way to serve the community.
That participation comes with a deliberate tradeoff. The budget cycle takes longer now because it includes leaders’ ideas, competing priorities, and the work of strategic alignment. A budget that finance once prepared on its own now involves the people who will carry it out, and that extra time is a sign that people are engaged.
Like many organizations, Faith Church Orlando represents the cultural shift that happens when leaders can finally see the numbers behind their ministry. NetSuite keeps the books, but Martus is where the church’s mission and vision become budgets that leaders can see, own, and act on. Through Martus, budget conversations reach beyond the finance office to pastors, principals, and department leaders, including the many discussions finance can’t attend. As Chris puts it, "Martus facilitates that."
One budget conversation at a time, Faith Church’s finance team and ministry leaders are turning the church’s mission and vision into action together.