Elizabeth City First Church of the Nazarene is a close-knit congregation in northeastern North Carolina. Led by Pastor Kay Lynn Perry, the church serves its community through worship, benevolence programs, and outreach such as grocery gift cards for families in need, monthly senior lunches, and local ministry support.

Like many local ministries, their mission is deeply personal and community-focused. But behind the scenes, managing finances was time-consuming and complicated.

The Problem: Manual Tracking and Missed Refunds

Before using Givefront, the church used a single credit card shared by multiple staff members. Each month, the treasurer had to sort through line items, guess who made each purchase, and collect paper receipts. The process was time-consuming and prone to error.

“Every month we’d get the statement and have to figure out who made each purchase,” Pastor Perry said. “It took hours, and if someone lost a receipt, we had to guess.”

On top of that, the church had never claimed North Carolina’s nonprofit sales tax refund, even though it was eligible under Form E-585, the Nonprofit and Governmental Entity Claim for Refund of State and County Sales and Use Taxes.

In North Carolina, churches and qualifying nonprofits do not get sales tax exemption at the point of sale. Instead, they must pay the tax and later file for a refund—tracking every eligible purchase, calculating county-level tax amounts, and compiling supporting documentation for submission to the North Carolina Department of Revenue.

“In Virginia, we just showed our tax-exempt letter and didn’t pay sales tax,” Pastor Perry explained. “But in North Carolina, you pay first and then have to file for a rebate. Tracking it manually just wasn’t worth it.”

The Solution: Givefront Automates North Carolina Form E-585 Refund Tracking

Givefront turned a tedious, manual process into a simple automated workflow. The platform automatically tracks every transaction, identifies sales tax paid, and organizes all documentation needed for the refund.

• Automatic sales tax detection: Givefront flags all eligible purchases where sales tax was paid, separating them by county and tax type.
• Receipt collection and documentation: Receipts are uploaded instantly by staff, ensuring every purchase has supporting proof for the refund.
• Prefilled Form E-585: Givefront compiles all eligible purchases, generates the totals by county and tax category, and provides a prefilled version of Form E-585 ready to submit to the state.
• Accounting automation: Transactions flow directly into QuickBooks Online, keeping financial records consistent and audit-ready.

“It never felt worth the effort until Givefront made it easy,” said Pastor Perry. “Now everything is tracked automatically, and we get the refund without all the paperwork.”

Why North Carolina’s Sales Tax Refund Process Is So Complex

Without Givefront, churches and nonprofits have to manually track every purchase, identify which items qualify for refund, and group them by over 100 different North Carolina counties, each with its own tax rate and type. The organization must then compile receipts, calculate totals, and submit a detailed Form E-585 to claim the refund.

This process can take dozens of hours each year and is often too overwhelming for small churches with limited staff. As a result, many eligible organizations never file for the refunds they deserve.

Givefront eliminates that barrier by automating the entire workflow—from purchase tracking to prefilled refund forms—so that North Carolina nonprofits can confidently reclaim thousands in sales tax each year.

The Impact: More Time and Money for Ministry

In their first year using Givefront, Elizabeth City First Church of the Nazarene recovered over $2,880 in sales tax refunds through the North Carolina E-585 process. More importantly, they now have full transparency into their spending and documentation.

“If it’s easy to track, it’s worth doing,” Pastor Perry said. “Now we can actually get those refunds and know everything is documented correctly.”

With Givefront, the church can focus on ministry, not paperwork—while ensuring that every dollar spent and every tax refund earned supports their mission of serving the Elizabeth City community.