Online Contributions

[BroDave]

First, I'm sure this topic was covered somewhere, but I could not find it, so I'll have to ask.
Our church has recently decided to start accepting online contributions through a service. It is not Vanco. I understand Vanco is supposed to integrate with PC+ very well, but alas.
Anyway, I am left with no capability to import files from their server to PaowerChurch+, and have to do everything as single contributions.
My troubles are increased because I don't know how to show each contribution, the fees for that contribution, and reconcile it with the bank.
When I log in to the egiving site, I have to select a date range of contributions to look at, and it shows the name, date and amount. I have to compute the fees for each transaction. To complicate this, the egiving company combines some or all money for each date when depositing it to our bank account.
In order to give credit to those who give, I have to use the Contribution module. This is the entire amount the member intended to give. Then, I suppose I would go to ENTER TRANSACTION to track the fees for the contributions. When I do that, it keeps the amount intended to be given correct, the fees are correct (which the church pays), but to reconcile with the bank is convoluted due to adding transactions together after taking fees out. I would have to factor out each transaction, after fees to reconcile.
This just sounds like the long way to do it, and I'm hoping there is another way.
I don't often ask for help, but I'm stuck here. Help!

[NeilZ]

First, I'm sure this topic was covered somewhere, but I could not find it, so I'll have to ask.
Our church has recently decided to start accepting online contributions through a service. It is not Vanco. I understand Vanco is supposed to integrate with PC+ very well, but alas.
Anyway, I am left with no capability to import files from their server to PaowerChurch+, and have to do everything as single contributions.
My troubles are increased because I don't know how to show each contribution, the fees for that contribution, and reconcile it with the bank.
When I log in to the egiving site, I have to select a date range of contributions to look at, and it shows the name, date and amount. I have to compute the fees for each transaction. To complicate this, the egiving company combines some or all money for each date when depositing it to our bank account.
In order to give credit to those who give, I have to use the Contribution module. This is the entire amount the member intended to give. Then, I suppose I would go to ENTER TRANSACTION to track the fees for the contributions. When I do that, it keeps the amount intended to be given correct, the fees are correct (which the church pays), but to reconcile with the bank is convoluted due to adding transactions together after taking fees out. I would have to factor out each transaction, after fees to reconcile.
This just sounds like the long way to do it, and I'm hoping there is another way.
I don't often ask for help, but I'm stuck here. Help!

Good grief ... is there no way for them to export a text file with the information? And they don't aggregate the fees into a total amount? You have to calculate them yourself??

FWIW ... unless they can export a file of some type then you're stuck with the manual entry. I'd have a LONG talk with the church board about why didn't they check with you before they went with this company.

That said, the fees for the online contribution is an expense to the congregation, so you really need to show that too.

I'm guessing the easiest way to do this would be something like this:

You're going to need an expense account to track the fees. After you post the contributions to Funds Accounting. You're going to find that transaction in the Unposted Transaction queue.

Now .. in my opinion, the online transaction fee is an operations expense. So, all the fees will be listed under the operations fund expense.

Once you have a total on the fees. You're going to modify the transaction that came in from Contributions. FWIW ... if you were using Vanco, this would be automatically done for you with the import of the Vanco file.

The transaction would look something like this assuming offerings was $1000 & the fees were $15.00

01-1110-000 Checking - DB 1000.00 -- Original entry from Contributions
01-4010-000 Tithes & Offerings - CR 1000.00 -- Original entry from Contributions
01-1110-000 Checking - CR 15.00
01-5510-000 Online Tithe Exp - DB 15.00

Then save the transaction. You'll get a screen about the transaction being created in another module, just click OK.

In this way, you're reflecting the FULL amount given as income, you're also reflecting the cost of the online transaction fees, and the result that it will (should?) agree with the direct deposit to the bank of 1000.00 minus their fees.

What I would do is test this out to see how it works first. As always make a backup of the accounting files using the Powerchurch backup utility so you can back out of any change if it doesn't appear correct.

[BroDave]

Thank you for your reply, and the information, Neil.
I had to read through the process twice to get it, but your method seems correct to me.
One minor concern I had was that I wanted to connect the online transaction fees with the donations.
This comes closer to doing that than creating a separate transaction for the fees.
Thank you for giving me something to work with.
I don't know how often you are told that you are indispensable, but I honestly believe the Lord is working through you.
Thank you for all you do for Him.

[onemore4gsus]

Hi, Dave

I've seen the suggestion that Neil recommends. I prefer to add all the deductions at the end of the month and enter a "Bank Fees" transaction for that amount. This is probably because the online giving vendor used to charge us monthly, so I was used to doing it that way. When they changed to per-donation fees, it made my head spin.

I have to create a spreadsheet to track bank vs PC+ deposits anyway, so totalling the difference between what the vendor deposited and what the donors gave isn't too much trouble in Excel.

We switched online giving vendors and *thankfully* we are back to a monthly fee for transactions.