New with a couple of basic questions

[MVUMCDRT]

I have taken over the treasurer role from someone who was doing everything by paper. Over the last few months I switched everything over to some Excel files I created. Our church has the PC program (V11) and I'd like to get everything in there.
I have the manual that came with the software, and I think I have enough knowledge and experience to do this. BUT, I'm struggling where to start. What order do things need to be done in? I can't find anything to help with this.
For example, Membership needs to be input before someone can enter Contributions?!?
Is there a simple checklist in which order to do things?

Thank you!

[NeilZ]

I have taken over the treasurer role from someone who was doing everything by paper. Over the last few months I switched everything over to some Excel files I created. Our church has the PC program (V11) and I'd like to get everything in there.
I have the manual that came with the software, and I think I have enough knowledge and experience to do this. BUT, I'm struggling where to start. What order do things need to be done in? I can't find anything to help with this.
For example, Membership needs to be input before someone can enter Contributions?!?
Is there a simple checklist in which order to do things?

Thank you!

First:
Contributions is NOT linked to Accounting in any way, shape or form. The only link from Contributions to Funds Accounting is a read-only access to the Chart of Accounts so that you can create Contribution Funds that will point to the proper income account in FA. Then when you post Contributions, the system will create a transaction that is dumped into the Unposted Transactions queue in FA.

Second:
You need to populate Membership prior to starting Contributions. This is because you need to be able to assign an envelope number to each giving member.

Third:
As Treasurer, you don't need to worry about Membership and Contributions, as Accounting is COMPLETELY stand alone, so I'd worry about that, and let the Admin/Membership secretary worry about membership.

[MVUMCDRT]

Thank you NeilZ...this is definitely along the lines of what I need to hear.
I'm just a bit confused...the church wanted me to start with the Accounting portion of PC. But, from what I've been able to gather, I think the membership people need to complete the Membership portion. Then our offering collector can enter the contributions. I understand that.
My question is, don't I need them to do this BEFORE I start using the Accounting portion? Otherwise how can I check account balances and payout as needed (general fund, utilities, missions, etc)? OR is there a way I can assign money to accounts (that come from contributions, but if we're not using the Contributions portion for now)?

[Matt]

As Neil said, Fund Accounting is completely stand alone. So you can go ahead and start using the Fund Accounting modules, regardless of whether the Membership or Contributions Modules have been set up. If you have income from contributions that you want to post to Fund Accounting, but you don't have the Membership and Contributions modules set up yet, just input an entry in Fund Accounting. You will need to know the breakout of the contribution amount (e.g. General, Building, Missions, etc.) when inputting this entry. If later on you decide to input these contributions in the Contributions Module then only post them to the Contributions module to avoid having a duplicate posting in Fund Accounting.