Procedure for entering contribution

[angel1]

Hello everyone,

I am using Powerchurch 11.5 and wanted to know if there is anyone who allows more than one person to enter contributions at the same time. I had asked this question in another post, but did not get a reply. I am currently the person entering the contributions, while there are usually 3-4 persons opening envelopes and counting the monies.

Please give me some suggestions on what others may be doing. We currently are staying 1-2 hours after service on Sunday, and one of the Trustee members wanted to know if two people entering would speed up the process.

Thanks,

Angel1

[NeilZ]

Hello everyone,

I am using Powerchurch 11.5 and wanted to know if there is anyone who allows more than one person to enter contributions at the same time. I had asked this question in another post, but did not get a reply. I am currently the person entering the contributions, while there are usually 3-4 persons opening envelopes and counting the monies.

Please give me some suggestions on what others may be doing. We currently are staying 1-2 hours after service on Sunday, and one of the Trustee members wanted to know if two people entering would speed up the process.

Thanks,

Angel1

Here's a question, how many envelopes are you processing ? How are you entering the data, is one person entering, while another one reads the envelope information and amount? Are you trying to do it all by yourself (read and enter)? I've found two people doing the entry, one reading and one entering does work much faster.

Giving an overview of exactly how your church does the counting would help, as we could see where there's a bottleneck.

It may speed things up if you get a check reader, thus all you need to do is run the check though the reader, and verify the amount being contributed. The system will pull up the account using the checking account number on the check. Saves a bunch of data entry time. The only drawback is if a couple uses separate checking accounts and writes checks for the contributions on both.

As far as two concurrent entry stations, I had thought I answered this previously that I do not believe that you can have two people entering contributions at the same time as you're both updating the database, and it would be possible that you could have one check contribution at one entry station, and another contribution from the same envelope number at the other. You would be locking the contribution record at one station while trying to update the record at another. This could cause a database deadlock.

[angel1]

Thanks as always. You did answer my question previously regarding two people entering at the same time, but some of our Trustees wanted to make sure that nothing had changed.

The process does go pretty quickly with one person entering the information for checks (at least I think so), but I think they are wondering if another person can be entering the cash envelopes while the other person is entering the checks. I explained to them exactly what you said and we do have some members who write checks on that Sunday, but may indeed bring another envelope with cash, or they have some contributions from one checking account and then from another, so the check reader may not work for us at this time either.

Our heaviest Sundays are the 1st Sunday and the 3rd Sunday, but I got some of them to file while I was entering the checks

Thanks again, we will just continue with things the way they are going.

angel1

[Jeff]

For future reference you can have multiple people entering contributions at the same time from different workstations. We had a larger church that had six or people entering contributions at once.

[NeilZ]

For future reference you can have multiple people entering contributions at the same time from different workstations. We had a larger church that had six or people entering contributions at once.

Good to know.

However Jeff, for my own knowledge, is there a possibility of a database record lock, or is the system just entering the data into a temporary table queue until Contribution Posting ??

[Jeff]

Information is just going into the CoTrans table. That is the unposted contributions file. There is a brief file file lock as it adds a new record. The routine that inserts the record checks for this and loops until it can add a new record.

[Jeff]

You will not be able to post the contributions until everyone but one person exists entering contributions.

[NeilZ]

Great ... thanks for the background info.