Vanco for donations to temporary restricted funds

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Greghc48
Posts: 82
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:23 am

Vanco for donations to temporary restricted funds

Post by Greghc48 »

Question,

We are considering Vanco to accept and process online donations. We are using the desktop version of Powerchurch and have the following 3 accounting funds using one checking account:

1) General
2) Designated (Temporary Restricted comprised of several individual fund areas)
3) Building / Cap Improvement (Temporary Restricted comprised of several fund areas)

All of our administrative fees, including bank fees are paid from the general fund 01 in normal expense accounts. Thus, for on line donations to the general fund, using Vanco, we expect that transaction fees will just be paid from an "online transaction" expense account we will set up.

I understand that ACH fees are billed monthly each month from Vanco, and in our case, could be paid from the general fund expense account noted above. However, for credit / debit card payments, I believe that fees are withheld with each payment, and not billed as a lump sum like ACH transactions.

I may have this wrong, but, for the restricted funds noted above, we have no administrative fee expense accounts within those areas. We just have expense accounts set up to pay things like playground, library, children, building projects, etc. For donations to the restricted funds, how would we process credit / debit card fee payments - as the expense accounts for transaction fees would be in fund 01 general, with the donations income in either fund 02 Designated or fund 03 building?

Sorry for long winded question - hope there is a simple solution as I'm sure we're not the first with this situation!

Thanks in advance.......

NeilZ
Posts: 10208
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:20 am
Location: Dexter NM
Contact:

Re: Vanco for donations to temporary restricted funds

Post by NeilZ »

Greghc48 wrote:
Tue Feb 15, 2022 4:48 pm
Question,

We are considering Vanco to accept and process online donations. We are using the desktop version of Powerchurch and have the following 3 accounting funds using one checking account:

1) General
2) Designated (Temporary Restricted comprised of several individual fund areas)
3) Building / Cap Improvement (Temporary Restricted comprised of several fund areas)

All of our administrative fees, including bank fees are paid from the general fund 01 in normal expense accounts. Thus, for on line donations to the general fund, using Vanco, we expect that transaction fees will just be paid from an "online transaction" expense account we will set up.

I understand that ACH fees are billed monthly each month from Vanco, and in our case, could be paid from the general fund expense account noted above. However, for credit / debit card payments, I believe that fees are withheld with each payment, and not billed as a lump sum like ACH transactions.

I may have this wrong, but, for the restricted funds noted above, we have no administrative fee expense accounts within those areas. We just have expense accounts set up to pay things like playground, library, children, building projects, etc. For donations to the restricted funds, how would we process credit / debit card fee payments - as the expense accounts for transaction fees would be in fund 01 general, with the donations income in either fund 02 Designated or fund 03 building?

Sorry for long winded question - hope there is a simple solution as I'm sure we're not the first with this situation!

Thanks in advance.......
I believe I answered this in your original post in a topic under the Contributions category, here: viewtopic.php?p=51030#p51030

However, as I said there, I would call Vanco for specific requirements.
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

Greghc48
Posts: 82
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:23 am

Re: Vanco for donations to temporary restricted funds

Post by Greghc48 »

Thanks Neil, I plan to call Vanco. My thoughts are to better characterize my question on our configuration and seek comments from others with similar needs. Thats the reason for the new post. Looking forward to hearing what others say too.
Thank you for your help.
Greg

Greghc48
Posts: 82
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:23 am

Re: Vanco for donations to temporary restricted funds

Post by Greghc48 »

Followup to my earlier post about online donations, and the use of Vanco.

I did go ahead and sign up for the Vanco service for our online giving program after getting the church approval. Here is what I found in the implementation process, which might be helpful to others:

1) The initial call with Vanco giving consultant was excellent. The giving website has a professional, polished look. The marketing consultant sold the service well, and answered most of my questions right off. Made it sound really easy.

2) After I signed on to the service, I was turned over to an implementation specialist to work with me on system set up. I had to learn the hard way that each “giving tile” on Vanco has to correspond to an individual Powerchurch contribution fund number. I found that this point was NOT covered anywhere, and the use of the term “funds” is misleading. Thus… for anyone out there thinking about Vanco, you need to keep that in mind. Vanco ONLY links directly to your Powerchurch contribution funds, and not Fund 01, 02, 03, etc for your checking account sections for unrestricted and restricted areas. Obviously, your contribution fund relationships set up in your accounting system will make those linkages. Don’t get confused like I did.

3) Fees are a little confusing to me as they hit the accounting system. But, the Vanco import feature does a great job of posting the transactions in Fund Accounting along with the posting of contributions. If you have multiple sections of a checking account, like ours - General, unrestricted (01), along with Designated, temporary restricted and building, temporary restricted, (02 and 03, respectively), you will get to chose one expense account to handle transaction fees. That expense account can be used across unrestricted and temp restricted funds. I did have to call the Powerchurch tech rep to give me an accounting walkthrough on how all the fees get charged. I wound up with some “negative equity” figures which the tech rep assured me was exactly as they needed to be. ACH (checking account) donation fees are invoiced at the end of the month. Credit / debit card donation fees are paid immediately from the donation. So…. That part kinda blew my mind, but it all came together in the import postings.

4) Recommendation…. To anyone out there considering Vanco, or other online service…. Be sure to really think about which Powerchurch contribution funds you would like to get online donations for. You’ll need to consider the balance between giving donors access to each and every one of your contribution funds vs having to then show multiple “giving tiles” on your giving web site. If we gave donors online access to all our contribution funds, we’d have about 25 giving tile buttons on the Vanco giving site. For our designated donation areas, I created a transitional “Designated Vanco Memo Contribution fund”, then required donors to specify their designated donation using the memo line. Then… once I see the designated donation with a memo line, I use the Powerchurch “reverse and correct feature to move the $ based on donor wishes. That keeps me from having multiple giving tile buttons on the Vanco giving site. The Powerchurch tech rep didn’t see that as an elegant solution, but understood what I was trying to do, and it works in our situation.

5) I’m just finishing my first month of online transactions, and I guess I would say I’d recommend Vanco to others, but just remember that they make it sound easier than it really is to implement, and the implementation consultants are not all that “up” on Powerchurch, as there are many SW companies out there for online giving. So…. Map out what you want to do, run lots of donation tests before you go “live” with your congregations, and go for it.

6) Another followup to my original post...

After using Vanco for 2 months, we are getting used to the fee transactions. The reconciliation has been easy even with the different fund numbers for our checking account. The Powerchurch import process has been extremely easy. I've been able to make some accounting adjustments to get rid of the 2 negative equity issues noted above, and after setting up the Vanco fund numbers to coincide with our Powerchurch contribution fund numbers, things are working very well. The contribution date (from donor perspective) is the date they made the transaction online. The deposit date varies after that----based on donor use of credit/debit card or bank account. You'll need to review the fund accounting transaction to know the "net deposit" after fees are pulled out by Vanco for credit / debit cards as part of the import process. Very happy now with Vanco services, import process, and with the way they handle fees. Wish I'd had a better understanding of the process as we implemented Vanco.

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