Finance
Newsletter
Previous Editions
Reminder – Work Funds Quarterly Reports are due April 20, 2022.
Tax Season has begun in the US! If you have US and state tax returns prepared by Lois Huston please pay attention to any emails from her to ensure timely and smooth tax filings.
Tax Equalization Rate Change – Please note that we are reducing the fee charged to single workers for the Tax Equalization Fund to 5% of gross salary from the current rate of 7%. This will take effect for the open enrollment in June and be effective for budgets beginning in July 2022.
This newsletter is also published on the GMC for your future reference as well. We know that you have so much going on and that keeping up with what is happening in Finance may be another item on a never-ending task list – thank you in advance for taking some time to read these announcements and for the important work that you do every day. Our hope with sending this to you is not that you become an expert in all WV financial matters, but that you are informed of changes and know where to turn if you need help. It is our pleasure to serve alongside you!
I have the pleasure of introducing a new member of the Finance department to you this quarter. Patience Rogers joined our Receipting team in June 2021 and, as you can see below, God has been working in her life and using her to reach others as well as to serve many in our organization.
“I’m very excited to be here at WorldVenture! I love interacting with the donors and helping them out. My husband (of 9 years this year!) and I have a passion for missions and our long term goal is to be missionaries to Japan. I’m originally from Florida where I met my husband, got married, moved around, and we ended up here in Colorado as an act of God. I came to faith shortly after moving here, and God changed my heart and life completely after that. We now are the youth leaders at our church and are really enjoying building up the youth group program. In my (very little) spare time left, I enjoy sewing and reading.”
It is great to have Patience on our team. She jumped in right away to the good work that Receipting does every day for our donors and workers and has become a valuable member of our team, contributing new ideas and demostrating a heart to serve. Patience joined WorldVenture because one of our missionianaries knew her and of her interest in missions and then mentioned to her the possibility of working at WorldVenture. We are grateful that God has brought Patience (and now her husband Tyler as well!) to work at HQ. We currently have two open positions on the Finance team and I would welcome your prayers that God would provide the right person to step into these roles. As you may imagine, it takes a unique person to work at WorldVenture HQ, as it does to go to the field – one who is called, has character, chemistry, and compotency to do this work. In addition to praying, if you know of anyone who may be a good fit to work at WorldVenture, please let them know and have them check out our open positions on our website at https://worldventure.com/jobs/ to apply.
As a team, we enjoy working with and serving you in the work of buildling the kingdom, you are in our prayers daily.
Sincerely,
Luke Oravec
Treasurer
Soraya Marin, VP/Chief Operations Officer
Luke Oravec, Treasurer
Fabian Perea, Assistant Treasurer, Staff Accountant, Americas & Asia
Christina Segura, Senior Staff Accountant – Europe/MENA
Dan Penney, Staff Accountant – Africa
Open Position, Staff Accountant
Madeline Shanley, Receipting Manager
Becky Binuya, Receipting Staff
Patience Rogers, Receipting Staff
Open Position, Receipting Staf
Ryan Volz, Accounts Payable Manager
Renee Chase, Accounts Payable Staff
Belinda Viescas, Payroll
FAQ for Work Funds, Find in GMC in Knowledge Tab → FIN.UG.07.05 FAQ for Work Funds
Set-Up Work Funds Part 1, 10:11 minutes, Find in GMC in Knowledge Tab → FIN.UG.07.06 Set-up Work Funds Part 1 – https://vimeo.com/680485981/ac1f6e14fa
How to Complete your Work Funds Report Part 2, 17:55 minutes, Find in GMC in Knowledge Tab → FIN.UG.07.07 How to Complete your Work Funds Report Part 2 – https://vimeo.com/682905139/2009e86ff0
Expense Categorization Listing, Find in GMC in Knowledge Tab → FIN.UG.05.12 WV Expense Categorization Listing
Missionary Rate & Fee Schedule, Find in GMC in Knowledge Tab → FIN.UG.07.02 Missionary Annual Support & Fee Rate Schedule
A worker is eligible to receive Backpay at the beginning of the calendar year for any involuntary salary reductions according to our Backpay Policy and Procedures. Effective July 1, 2022, WV is expanding the scope of this policy so that Backpay can be paid out when a worker resigns or retires. This means that workers will be eligible to receive Backpay with their final paycheck when their final accounts are settled.
As a reminder, Backpay is compensation to our employees therefore any Backpay paid with the final paycheck will be reported as taxable income to the worker. Please refer to the official documentation on the GMC concerning these standard procedures.
We’ve been mentioning it at HA Debriefs, in Finance Newsletters, and through other venues that WorldVenture is in the process of developing a new uniform banking policy. This was the motivation behind the banking practices survey that we sent out several months ago.
First, we want to say a big “Thank you!” to those who participated in the survey. Second, the information you provided has been very helpful, and we would like to share a summary of the results…
ATM Access – Similarly, ATM’s are accessible and reliable for 76%, leaving 24% without ready access to cash or physical banking services.
These results are one reason we are taking our time with the rollout of a new banking policy. We want to understand the implications for all of you. At the same time, we want everyone to understand that this process will result in a new policy, new procedures, and new expectations for all of us. Our plan is to have the policy available by the end of this year and to start to put the new practices into place soon thereafter.
Nonetheless, many of you are no doubt thinking, “Everything is working fine. Why do we need a new policy, or to change our practices?” In fact, this was a common refrain in the survey results. There are three big reasons a new banking policy is needed:
All of this bank account information should be at the fingertips of those at HQ who are responsible to answer to our auditors and to the IRS. Not having a central database of this information is poor stewardship and even potentially dangerous to the organization. Consider the following hypothetical scenario where a smaller field neglects to update the signatories on their local bank account for several years, then the one remaining signatory on that field suddenly leaves the mission or dies, which could result in the funds being inaccessible.
Finally, this is not an attempt to gain “line-of-sight” to field monies for purposes of repatriating funds back to the U.S. for headquarters’ purposes. Our international activities are carried out under a field-driven approach and we are not planning on changing that with these new standards.
This summer, we will be sending a communication with instructions on how to provide to us information related to the current ministry bank accounts (or accounts that hold ministry funds) for which you are responsible. Please note that providing this information will be required and we appreciate your attention to this matter. Should you have any questions about this matter, please contact us at financehelp@worldventure.com.
We have officially started the Spouse Compensation Implementation Project. The project team held its first meeting in March which introduced the team to each other and the project requirements. The project team includes representation from numerous WorldVenture departments, with the following participants:
Linda Gawthrop (Personnel Ministries)
Sheryl Gudeman (Global Initiatives)
Andrew LaSavio (Partner Ministries, f.k.a. Mobilization)
Soraya Marin (GO Team) Luke Oravec (Finance)
Kathleen Russell (Global Initiatives)
Christina Segura (Finance)
Corinne Thorp (Global Initiatives)
Belinda Viescas (Finance)
Joy Watson (Global Initiatives)
“We propose that the current financial compensation model be changed so that salary can be split between husband and wife.” – 2020 Spouse Compensation Task Force
I (Luke) am thankful for each of these individuals and am pleased to be working with them on this project and that they are contributing their leadership talent to this change. Each person will represent their departments or divisions and its respective interests to this matter.
The GO Team has tasked this team with implementing the main recommendation from the 2020 Spouse Compensation Task Force which was approved by the GO Team in October 2020:
“We propose that the current financial compensation model be changed so that salary can be split between husband and wife.”
In its recommendation, the task force proposed four salary split ratios for appointed couples:
The 2020 Task Force’s assignment was to research and make recommendations to pay both appointed workers in a husband-wife appointment. The implementation team’s job is to dig into the details of our workflows, policies, and processes and put into practice the Task Force’s recommendations
As you may be able to imagine, the change will contain many logistical decisions that the project team will need to address. However, we want you to be aware of some important principles up front that will guide this process and so that you can consider them for your situation:
Our goal is to implement this as simply and understandably as possible. We will be communicating more in the future through various methods, but want to make this initial announcement to keep you in the loop. Finally, we welcome your questions. For now, please send any questions that you have via an email to financehelp@worldventure.com. We will collect them and the team will consider them as we work on this project.
In the last Finance newsletter, we announced that we are planning to change our payroll provider from Paycom, to a company called “Paylocity”, with an expected implementation date of March 31, 2022. It became clear during the early stages of the implementation process that Paylocity would not be able to provide the level of service that we need and as a result we terminated the contract that we had with them.
In the process of interviewing companies last year, we had a clear runner-up and, through prayerful consideration and additional meetings with them, we have entered into a contract with a company called, “Paychex” (all their names sound the same!). It is clear, so far in the process, that Paychex is more in line with our desire to deliver quality service in this area and we are excited to be partnering with them.
The change in companies has caused us to move back our implementation deadline to later this spring/summer. We will be working hard to get this done before the end of the fiscal year and will be sharing more with you in the future.
As we stated last quarter, this change will be mostly behind the scenes for our workers, but please consider whether or not you need to download your paystubs and Form W-2 and other tax forms like the Form 1095 from Paycom for your records. To do this, log into Paycom at https://www.paycom.com/, click on the login link in the upper right hand side of the page, and select “Employee”. Please contact us at financehelp@worldventure.com if you need help signing in. had with them
We want to clarify a question that we sometimes get regarding changing the voluntary contribution amount for 403(b) retirement accounts. As a reminder, the current process for changing the voluntary 403(b) amount requires a worker to log into Envoy’s website or call them and request a change in the deduction amount. Finance then pulls a report from Envoy Financial after open enrollment and your Staff Accountant makes the change for the 403(b) in your budget according to the report from Envoy.
While the worker can request a change outside of open enrollment, it is important to note that those changes are made effective for payroll with the next budget cycle. Another way to think of this is that the budget open enrollment period is also the Envoy open enrollment period. In practice, this means that you would go to Envoy and change your 403(b) in June and/or December and it will be effective for the next budget cycle.
Example:
Please note that if multiple changes are made in the same open enrollment period, we will take the last change that was made and use that amount to update your budget. That amount will then be included in your new budget.
Please keep this in mind as you plan for retirement as we approach the next open enrollment period in June for the July – December budget period. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this change please do not hesitate to send an email to financehelp@worldventure.com with “budget – 403(b)” in the subject line.
The end of WorldVenture’s fiscal year is June 30, 2022
Banking inventory – This summer, we will be sending a communication with instructions on how to provide to us information related to the current ministry bank accounts (or accounts that hold ministry funds) for which you are responsible.
Information contained in this newsletter is intended for internal use by WorldVenture workers, staff, approved volunteers, and board members. Unauthorized distribution to other parties is not permitted without permission from Finance leadership.