Mid-year pledge statement errors

[firstpc]

Hello,

I'm new to the forum. New to PowerChurch since December 2008.

I've been instructed to send mid-year pledge statements to active pledgers.

I have a pledged amount by contributor entered for 09 for a total of $960/yr ($80/mo). On the statement it shows Pledged - $720; and paid - $560.00. Then in another box entitled Pledge Status as of 9/30/09 it shows Pledged - $720; and paid - $1,400! When I check his individual statement it shows he's only paid $560.00; so where is the $1,400 coming from? This tells the contributer that he has overpaid his pledge by $680 and it isn't so. I think it may be picking up pledged payments from previous years but those are posted on a separate fund description #. Every new pledge year, a new # is assigned. It has done this on many of the contributor's pledge statements and I am to send these out by October 10th. Help!

Why isn't it showing the entire amount pledged for the year and then the amounts paid to 9/30 with the difference owing or a credit?

Please advise at your earliest opportunity.

Thank you.

Sabrina

[Zorak]

I think it may be picking up pledged payments from previous years

This is most likely what happened: When adding this year's pledge, instead of adding a new pledge, the PC+ user changed the dates and fund number of last year's pledge.

To see if this is the case, go to Contributions > Maintain Pledges. Locate this person and click OK. Select this year's pledge, then click Pledge Detail. The grid on the right of the screen will show all the contributions that are posted to this pledge, making up the "Actual" amount that you are seeing on the statement.

The easiest thing to do to fix this is to delete the pledge and then add it again. When PowerChurch Plus prompts you to search for Contributions to apply to the pledge, choose Yes.

You can do the same thing for last year's pledge if you want. Simply add it again and choose Yes to search for Contributions to apply to the pledge.

[BillG49]

Why isn't it showing the entire amount pledged for the year and then the amounts paid to 9/30 with the difference owing or a credit?

Sabrina

Sabrina,

I'm not sure why it is picking up the wrong amounts for contributions, but I can tell you why it's only showing $720 for the pledged amount. That is the YTD pledge, equal to 9/12 of the annual pledge. If you want to show the full year pledge and the amount still outstanding, you will have to enter a date range of 01/01 through 12/31. Just make sure you don't post any contributions after 9/30 before you run the statements, or those contributions will be included as well.

Good luck,
Bill

[Frank Henderson]

The answer to solving the problem of contributions from former years showing up in Pledge Details solved a problem for me. The date however was in 2008 and it's now 2012 and the problem is still occurring. Has any attempt been made to finding a permanent solution to this because it messes up certain reporting efforts and is a pain to check out looking for all of them. For instance, I just finished searching all of our pledgers' Details to discover whose were erroneous so none would slip by. (I found four.) Should we have to do this before every financial report we produce that has to do with pledge payments? Very time consuming. I'd be open to suggestions for something quicker.

[NeilZ]

The answer to solving the problem of contributions from former years showing up in Pledge Details solved a problem for me. The date however was in 2008 and it's now 2012 and the problem is still occurring. Has any attempt been made to finding a permanent solution to this because it messes up certain reporting efforts and is a pain to check out looking for all of them. For instance, I just finished searching all of our pledgers' Details to discover whose were erroneous so none would slip by. (I found four.) Should we have to do this before every financial report we produce that has to do with pledge payments? Very time consuming. I'd be open to suggestions for something quicker.

Frank ... the issue has nothing to do with the program. The system will allow you to edit an old pledge, that is something that people may have to do once in a while. The issue is the person who is putting in the pledges. They have to make sure they create A NEW pledge, and not reuse an old pledge line.

And no, you need not do this every time you do financial reports if the entries are done correctly, you shouldn't see this issue.

FWIW ... this is not a major problem as I've not seen this problem reported on the forums in a long while.

[Eden Whitehead]

The answer to solving the problem of contributions from former years showing up in Pledge Details solved a problem for me. The date however was in 2008 and it's now 2012 and the problem is still occurring. Has any attempt been made to finding a permanent solution to this because it messes up certain reporting efforts and is a pain to check out looking for all of them. For instance, I just finished searching all of our pledgers' Details to discover whose were erroneous so none would slip by. (I found four.) Should we have to do this before every financial report we produce that has to do with pledge payments? Very time consuming. I'd be open to suggestions for something quicker.

Frank ... the issue has nothing to do with the program. The system will allow you to edit an old pledge, that is something that people may have to do once in a while. The issue is the person who is putting in the pledges. They have to make sure they create A NEW pledge, and not reuse an old pledge line.

Someone (Neil?) correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that when entering contributions, when you enter a contribution fund number that corresponds to a pledge fund, a notification line comes up identifying the pledge that the contribution will be applied to? I don't always look at it carefully, but it seems taking the time to check it during entry would be easier and less time-consuming that having to go back and manually check for errant entries later.

Just my 2cents worth,
Eden

[NeilZ]

Someone (Neil?) correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that when entering contributions, when you enter a contribution fund number that corresponds to a pledge fund, a notification line comes up identifying the pledge that the contribution will be applied to? I don't always look at it carefully, but it seems taking the time to check it during entry would be easier and less time-consuming that having to go back and manually check for errant entries later.

Just my 2cents worth,
Eden

You are correct Eden, the Contributions Entry screen will show that there is a pledge setup for that Contributor in that Contribution Fund.

[Frank Henderson]

My original question dealt with setting up pledges at the beginning of the year, nothing to do with entering contributions. But the problem as stated is solved or at least we now know what to look for if it should occur again. Thanks so much.

[juliejpr]

The same problem happened to me, with slightly different circumstances. We made pledges to a debt reduction fund for the first time ever, so there were no prior years to get picked up.

When I ran contribution reports, one pledge showed up as having received double the amount actually paid in. I double-checked that everything had been entered correctly, and it had. The report showed the correct amounts in giving each week and in the fund summary; it was only incorrect in the pledge summary.

However, I found this thread and even though there weren't previous years, I decided to try deleting the pledge and re-entering it. The system now reports it correctly, even though every bit of data entered was the same.

I hope this bug can be fixed in future releases; I have wasted a lot of time trying to fix this problem.

[NeilZ]

Frankly, unless people have been calling the customer service line, there are only two or three messages on the forums about this. I'm not sure if this can be called a bug or not.

If it were a bug, it would be turning up more often.

It would help if we knew which versions of Powerchurch are being used.

[juliejpr]

We use version 11. I would like to call customer service but our church doesn't pay for that. I was told it was too expensive and that they weren't helpful, and I should just go the the forums. I would imagine there are many others with this issue.

[Zorak]

If what you are experiencing is a problem in the program, you don't have to pay for support.

What causes the amount to be doubled in a pledge most frequently is when the person entering the pledge initially types the full amount of the pledge in the "Start Balance" field. That's not to say for certain that is your issue, because we haven't looked at your data and don't really know anything about the situation other than you saying it is a bug.

We have over 34,000 churches and organizations using our software and it is safe to say that the largest portion of them are using Membership & Contributions. If the software was not calculating pledges properly, we would be in trouble.

[NeilZ]

We use version 11. I would like to call customer service but our church doesn't pay for that. I was told it was too expensive and that they weren't helpful, and I should just go the the forums. I would imagine there are many others with this issue.

Not sure who told you that the customer service people weren't helpful. Yes, support can cost, but (If I remember right) if you've not called for support at all, your first call falls under the initial free support area.

And, as mentioned by Zorak, bugs are free .. er, that didn't come out right. Fixing bugs are free !!!