Contribution total not in transactions

[rlcox]

I have had multiple problems with a computer crash, corrupted file and upgrading to V11. I finally have the corrupted file fixed and have V11 on both church computer and my computer where I do the treasurer's work. I had noticed either prior to my computer crashing that the last offering of February did not come over to my computer when I restored a backup from the church where the financial secretary enters Sunday offering.

She prints out an unposted contributions report for me so I was able to enter the information into my computer so that the two would match. I recently did this after getting the corrupted file fixed and V11 installed on my computer. I backed up my computer, restored the BU to the church computer, the financial secretary entered this past Sunday's offering, I backed up the church computer again and restored it to my computer.

Odd things have happened. I had reconciled February and March after installing V11 to my computer. When I restored the back up from the church and tried to reconcile April, I found that February and March were not reconciled and I had to do them over again. When I got to March, the 2/28 offering was on the statement but not in my choices to reconcile. So I figured somehow I had lost it. I went to reenter the donations and found that the donations are in the congregants records but there is no total in Fund Accounting. I thought maybe I could delete the offerings from the individual records and start over but of course the system then wanted me to post this to fund accounting which would remove donations from fund accounting that never got entered to fund accounting. I dont' know what to do next. I had issues with my backup CD so to get the backup from the church tonight I had to erase the CD and start again. So I have no earlier backups to restore. Help!!!


Laurie

[NeilZ]

I went to reenter the donations and found that the donations are in the congregants records but there is no total in Fund Accounting. I thought maybe I could delete the offerings from the individual records and start over but of course the system then wanted me to post this to fund accounting which would remove donations from fund accounting that never got entered to fund accounting. I dont' know what to do next. I had issues with my backup CD so to get the backup from the church tonight I had to erase the CD and start again. So I have no earlier backups to restore. Help!!!


Laurie

FWIW .. you do NOT have to post those Contribution reversals to Funds Accounting, just post them to Contributions only, which is one of the options in the pull down selection.

That said, what I would do is get ONE verified database. I would take the time and do the books at the church until you get both the contributions module and the Funds Accounting modules correct and up to date.

Then, make a backup of the Accounting Files ONLY !!! If all you're doing at home is the books, then you really do NOT need the rest of the data (Membership, Contributions, etc).

When the Financial Secretary enters the contributions, have her post the transactions by using the Update Funds Accounting via File. She will be given the chance to save the file to a hard drive, CD, Floppy or USB Flash (thumb) drive. This drive can then be given to you, and you can then import the transactions in Funds Accounting at home.

You can then backup the Accounting Files ONLY to the Thumb Drive, which can then be used to restore that data to the Church computer. The only data coming FROM the church computer will be the contributions transactions, everything else will be going TO the church computer. In this way there is no way anything on the church computer can mess up your files, and the church computer would then be the offsite storage of the financial records.

FWIW ... the issue you're having is one of the reasons I (as a long time user of Powerchurch) do not recommend the 'backup and restore' method of using Powerchurch.

What I've done in the past was have the treasurer either do the books at the church, or installed GoToMyPC on one of the networked church computers, and the treasurer could work at home, but still do all the work on the Church computer and database.

I know, some will say that it may be awkward, or overkill, but in the entire time this was (and is still) in place at the church, they have never lost data due to a bad restore from offsite.