Counter's form for Data Entry

[Alaraujo]

Currently, our church accounting is done by hand. When counting weekly contributions, they use a method that is hard to interrupt for a PowerChurch data entry person. Before I attempt to re-invent the wheel, can someone share with us a form they use to count and document their collections to be used to enter in the data?
Our Sunday attendance runs between 400 to 500.

[NeilZ]

Currently, our church accounting is done by hand. When counting weekly contributions, they use a method that is hard to interrupt for a PowerChurch data entry person. Before I attempt to re-invent the wheel, can someone share with us a form they use to count and document their collections to be used to enter in the data?
Our Sunday attendance runs between 400 to 500.

We just enter the data directly into Powerchurch. While you can do this with 2 people, we have 3. Once the envelopes are divided into checks and cash, one person starts reading off the envelope number, where it is going (operations, or building), and amount. The data entry person is busy entering this thru the contributions entry screen, the other person is counting any loose cash offerings.

Once all the entry is done including loose cash, we print out the bank deposit slip, and verify the checks and amounts, and the cash is double counted and verified by the total on the slip.

This works great and we're done in about 30 minutes.

At one church we did this with only 2 people and had the attendance you had, it took about 45 minutes. We RARELY had a problem, if we did, the bank called the church with the problem. Since the Contributions Secretary was the only one who posted Contributions, she could correct any entries that needed correction prior to posting.

9 times out of 10, the problem was a check amount that was not caught during the check review. Easily fixed.

FWIW ... you don't have to have the entire team trained on data entry, usually one person per week is needed. The hardest part of the data entry is the adding of a new person to the system, and again, in v11.x, the add family wizard makes it very easy.

[Alaraujo]

Thank you so much for your input. That makes so much sense.
Blessings to you for sharing.

[Linda Stepanek]

You can also run an envelope report in the Contribution Module and sort by last name. We usually save this as an Excel document and then modify it by adding columns for the various collections they are contributing to. Then you have their envelope number, name and a place to put amounts. This sheet is filled out by the counters and then given to the person that inputs it into PowerChurch later. This provides a double check that is easier to go back through than all the envelopes. It also will only show the people that actually contribute if done through the contribution module so it is easier to handle.