Church "Checkout" 2012

This year, the Central Texas Conference (CTC) is employing the EZRA statistical reporting system from the General Council of Finance and Administration (GCFA) to do the end of year “checkouts” for the churches of the CTC. You may access the EZRA tool by going to ezra.gcfa.org.

Ezra, which happens to be a Hebrew name that appropriately means “help,” is a web-based interactive database that provides each conference or United Methodist agency the ability to enter data and have real-time access to information.Calvin Scott, Central Texas Conference IT Coordinator, has put together a very easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide on how to enter your checkout information via Ezra. You can download the guide here.

By using a web-based system synchronized across the denomination conferences will see enhancement in efficiency, save time and money and experience enhanced accuracy as data will only be entered once and can be double-checked immediately.

The last day to enter your churches statistical information – or perhaps better said, the deadline to turn in your checkout – is Wednesday, Jan. 25. So please login and begin the process before that date in case you run into any technical trouble or have questions along the way.

If, after you’ve consulted the EZRA Help Guide, you still have questions or need additional help, please contact Calvin Scott (calvin@ctcumc.org or 817-877-5222). Calvin can assist you with most issues regarding checkout – things like usernames and passwords, what data should go where, unlocking your tables, etc. and so-forth. If he doesn’t know the answer, he can quickly get you in contact with the appropriate resource.

To learn more about EZRA and all that it is designed to do, see the ctcum.org news article from Jan. 4.