User Support Forum

I an not certain how to post these contributions. We had our 75-th homecoming celebration, and quite a number of our members bought picture frames, photo film, photo processing, etc for the celebration. The church is OK with all these.

Several members have turned in receipts for these items, and asked for a tax statement for deductibility reasons. Do I key these into powerchurch contribution modules? Or produce some other paperwork.

Is there a way to say 'thanks for the tax-deductible gift, but have it NOT hit the bank deposit... since it is tough to deposit the large landscape photographs thru that tiny little slot on the side of the bank. (This is different from the Chickens-deposit story in techTales, since I know the exact value from the purchase just a week earlier.

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How is this usually handled?
Thanks for your help, guys.

sincerely
--Gary

Gary,

First of all, if these purchases were bona fide, then reimbursement from the church is appropriate. Otherwise, (in my book) it is not reimburseable.

They can not be both reimbursed for the purchases AND receive a tax deductible statement. That's double-dipping and illegal.

What we do is write a letter to the individual thanking them for the donation and stating that it is up to them to define the value of their gift for tax purposes.

In other words, we do not apply a value to any gift. The church is not a recognized authority for doing something like that.

To really answer your question, nothing goes into PowerChurch in the contributions module. If it makes sense, you might add the item(s) to the church's physical inventory.

My $.07 worth,

Jeff

Gary:

Jeff is correct that you can not be both reimbursed and get a tax deduction. One possible solution is to set up a fund called non cash contributions. The fund would have no revenue or cash accounts. That way you could enter it into the contributions module and it would not flow over to the general ledger because it does not have to in this case. At the end of the year, non cash contributions would be listed on the giving statement.