Tales From Tech 2 - Issue: 16

In today's edition, I want to talk about pledges and some of the changes that you'll find in Version 8. And, thinking about pledges and contributions reminded me of that old saying: A penny saved is worth a pound of cure.

I think this topic may be large enough to span multiple volumes of Tales From Tech 2. My plan is to spend today talking about a couple of the major changes and some of the new tools in Version 8 that are designed to help you maintain and track pledges and contributions. I think in Volume 17, I will have a Question and Answer kind of thing that will answer some common questions. Finally, in Volume 18 (if I survive that long), I will discuss some of the new reports in Contributions and how the built-in reports will be affected by all of these wonderful and exciting new features.

CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE

One of the biggest changes to Contributions is the fact that you can now have multiple pledges to the same fund for any contributor. In previous versions of the program, this was not the case. In Version 8, if a person has a pledge to fund X for the year 2000, they can also have a pledge to fund X for the year 2001 (and one for 2002 and so on and so on).

If you do want to keep more than one pledge to a specific fund for someone, keep in mind that the date ranges cannot overlap. In other words, you cannot have an individual with one pledge to fund X dated 1/1/2001 to 6/30/2001 and a second pledge to that fund dated 1/1/2001 to 12/31/2001.

LET ME COUNT THE WAYS (OR THE MONEY)

To add, modify or delete individual pledge records, go to the Maintain Pledges screen under the Contributions menu. If you upgraded from a prior version of PowerChurch Plus, one of the first things you may notice is that the pledge records are now on an envelope-by-envelope basis. This means that all the pledges for any envelope number are all on one screen. (I think this is just the coolest thing, don't you?)

Another change to this screen is the addition of 2 buttons at the bottom entitled "Pledge Detail" and "Search for Contributions." Let me tell you more about each one.

When you select a pledge and click on the "Pledge Detail" button, a window will display all the specifics about the pledge. In fact, in addition to showing you the pledge period, the amount and all of that, it actually shows you all of the contributions that have been applied to the pledge. Plus, this screen will also show you the current status of a pledge. So, instead of printing out a Pledge Statement (hey, that's a new report, too) when someone needs to know how they're doing on a pledge, just bring up the "Pledge Detail" screen and read off the details. (Oh, by the way, if you need to change a pledge record, you would click on the "Change" button under Maintain Pledges, instead of the "Pledge Detail" button. Of course, you knew that already, didn't you?)

Next is the "Search for Contributions" button. If you click on this button (go ahead, don't be afraid, nobody's watching), the program will go through each and every posted contribution for this envelope number to see if there are any for this fund within the date range of the pledge that haven't been applied to the pledge. What this means in English (because, as you can see above, my French is not that good) is if a contribution was posted and the date was within the pledge period and it hasn't already been applied to the pledge, that contribution will be displayed and you will have the choice of applying it to the pledge or not. (Okay, maybe that didn't help. I hope you aren't more confused than you were. If you are, just re-read this section. If not, read on. We're not finished yet.)

The last thing I want to note about the Maintain Pledges screen is a feature that you will see when you add a new pledge for someone. The program will now ask you when you add a new pledge if you want to search for contributions to apply to it. What happens if you click Yes is the program will go through all the contributions that have been posted to the fund and, if any of them are within the date range of the pledge, a list of those contributions will be displayed and you will be able to select any of them that you want to apply toward the pledge. One of the reasons you might use this feature is if you entered and posted the contributions before adding the pledge record.

APPLY WITHIN

Now that we know a little more about how to maintain pledges, let's talk a while about how you apply contributions to a pledge.

There are really 3 different ways to apply a contribution to a pledge.

The first and probably the most obvious way is to simply enter a contribution to a fund that a pledge exists for. For this to work, the pledge record must already exist and the date of the contribution must be within the date range of the pledge.

If the contribution is supposed to be applied to a different pledge, you will be able to choose a different pledge when you are entering the contribution. You can actually choose any pledge that is to the same fund you are entering the contribution for. This means that you can easily apply a contribution to a pledge even if the pledge hasn't begun or has already ended. (I'll tell you more about this in Volume 17.)

The second way you can apply a contribution to a fund is by using the "Search for Contributions" button on the Maintain Pledges screen. As I described above, the most obvious reason you might use this option is if you have entered the contributions before creating the pledge records. You could also use this feature if you accidentally deleted and then re-added a pledge for someone.

The third way that you can apply contributions to a pledge is by using the new "View Posted Contributions" screen. This screen can show you, for each envelope number, every single contribution that has been posted. (By the way, the reason I said "can" instead of "does" is because you actually have the ability to filter the information you see. You could actually choose to look at a specific date range or just one fund, for example.)

If you do not filter the results, you will see every contribution that has ever been posted for the envelope you are viewing (unless someone has deleted data from Contributions, of course). You can even click on the column headers on this screen to change the way the information is sorted. (Please note that each column sorts in ascending order except for date. If you sort by date, the most recent entries will be at the top and the oldest ones will be at the bottom.)

Anyway, the point is (and I know you didn't think I was ever going to get here) that you can actually change the contributions on this screen to apply to a different pledge for that fund (if one exists) or even change the contribution so that it no longer applies to a pledge at all. It's easy. All you have to do is to highlight the contribution and then click the "Change Pledge" button. This will bring up a window that will allow you to pick the pledge the contribution is for or you can click a box to indicate that the contribution is not to be applied to a pledge.

Cool, isn't it?