Direct Deposit Service Provider

[LizAA]

So how do you handle the tax deductions for employees? Do you process payroll in powerchurch, and then use the net amount as a 'bill' to the employee's account? That's what I want to propose to my treasurer but not sure how to do the whole payroll process without generating a check.... So what are the transactions in PC that you do per employee? To do direct deposit for three employees at $25/month just doesn't seem like a deal to me. Whereas online bill pay is free albeit I will have to figure out the lead time for the monies to be cleared.

[NeilZ]

So how do you handle the tax deductions for employees? Do you process payroll in powerchurch, and then use the net amount as a 'bill' to the employee's account? That's what I want to propose to my treasurer but not sure how to do the whole payroll process without generating a check.... So what are the transactions in PC that you do per employee? To do direct deposit for three employees at $25/month just doesn't seem like a deal to me. Whereas online bill pay is free albeit I will have to figure out the lead time for the monies to be cleared.

Everything is processed in Powerchurch. You DO NOT generate a check, you generate a Manual Check from within Payroll. You just change the Payment Method on the Employee's Payroll Information tab (Maintain List of Employees) to Manual Check. When you process the payroll, you will enter a 'number' for each employee. I use the following format: PYYMMDD-00, where P is for payroll, MMDDYY is the date, and -xx is a 2 digit sequential number.

You can find out more in the Powerchurch manual or in the pcplus115.pdf Adobe Acrobat file (found in the Powerchurch\PCPLUS115 directory) on page 315. What you'll do is Print Pay Stubs instead of print checks. I use the check amount from those stubs to enter the 'bill' on my bank's bill pay page. I then cut the stubs apart and issue them to the employees.

My bank has a 5 business day lead time, so I usually process payroll so that the funds arrive at least a day before the 15th or end of the month.

[LizAA]

Fantastic!!
Thank you so much Neil. I really appreciate your wealth of Powerchurch knowledge.
Blessings on you!!

[wms7328]

You may want to check with your current bank. Most banks offer direct ACH transfers that allows you to transfer money from your account to any account at any bank. Our bank charges $25 per month for up to 50 transactions each month and I think 25 cents a transaction after that. It's easy to set up, you enter the account information, Routing and Account Number, for each employee and then you can just transfer the payroll check amount to their account on whatever frequency you pay employees.

[LizAA]

I am curious as to whether the ACH Solutions option is working for Payroll or not? i.e. Did you ever get paid?
It seems this would be a cheaper way to set up direct debit payments. it may even be a future option for electronic offering collection...

[wms7328]

Using a bank's direct ACH transfer to deposit payroll for our employees is working well. You enter the net payroll amount for each employee, check amount if you were writing a check, and the date the transfer is to occur. All the payroll accounting is done in Power Church payroll module. Our bank charges a set fee for the first 50 transfers each month ($25) and 25 cents a transfer after that.

A better solution for accepting electronic contributions to your church is using a service such as VANCO Payment Solutions. Power Church has done an excellent job in interfacing with the VANCO service and with one click you can transfer all your electronic contributions to accounting with all the correct information. The reason this works so well is that VANCO provides a way to transfer the fund that the contribution is for. You set up fund numbers in Vanco that match the contribution fund numbers in PC and everything is transferred into accounting and contributions correctly. This eliminates all the potential errors from manual entries. I haven't seen any other payment service that offers this feature. Vanco also offers a payment Kiosk that is reasonable to purchase and allows credit card swipes on site for anything set up in your system. It also is working on a smart phone app that will allow the same thing. Currently available for iPhones and they are working on the Android version. VANCO customer service is helpful in setting up any of these options.

We currently receive about 40% of our routine contributions through this service and it works flawlessly. People really appreciate the convenience. Church has to pay the credit card fee, but VANCO provides a way for the contributor to pay this fee and many of our folks do that.

[LizAA]

I was actually wanting to know about using the company ACH Solutions for our direct deposit. We write six checks a month for payroll so $25/mo is not financially feasible right now... I read earlier that ACH Solutions may be cheaper... just wanted to know how well it worked.

[wms7328]

OK, I didn't understand your question. We set the payments up through our bank and didn't use a third party provider. I don't have any experience with the company you referenced.

[FBCMoyock]

I was actually wanting to know about using the company ACH Solutions for our direct deposit. We write six checks a month for payroll so $25/mo is not financially feasible right now... I read earlier that ACH Solutions may be cheaper... just wanted to know how well it worked.

I signed up with ACH Solutions. It is a little more work than using VANCO. VANCO was just a portal to plug a number into. ACH Solutions is a full fledged ACH program, so you just have to dig in and setup just the one area you need. It cost me a $15 one time setup fee and now $0.25 per transaction, so in my case, $2.50 per month. My bank charges $35 per month plus a per transaction fee. With only 5 transactions a month, it wasn't worth it. With Vanco you just told the system what day you wanted people to get paid and it did all the calculations for you. With ACH Solutions, you have to do that yourself. Our first payday my people got paid one day late. Last month 2 days early. I think I have their system down now, so hopefully it will be the day I want this time. BTW, I have my payroll setup as Direct Deposit instead of Manual Check. I'm sure it does about the same thing. It prints a full page pay stub after you process the payroll.