Open offerings

[cmp]

I am filling in for our envelope secretary and entering contributions for the first time. Although it has gone well, I can not seem to enter "Open Offerings" for which no envelope number or name is associated. Can anyone direct me in the right direction as I can not see anything in the guide on this.
Thank you in advance.
/c

[NeilZ]

I am filling in for our envelope secretary and entering contributions for the first time. Although it has gone well, I can not seem to enter "Open Offerings" for which no envelope number or name is associated. Can anyone direct me in the right direction as I can not see anything in the guide on this.
Thank you in advance.
/c

Check to see if the persona has created an envelope that has a name of Loose Plate Offerings or something like that. That is the recommended way to handle these types of contributions. It should have an envelope number that is outside the normal envelope number range.

That is, if your church uses numbers 100 thru 300, the "Loosy Cash" envelope is 99, if it used 1 thru 300, you use 999. Basically you use a number that you will NEVER use. That said, NEVER use the number 99999, you shouldn't be able to anyway, but don't even try. Its used by the system when (after 4 years) old data is deleted.

If she doesn't have such an envelope setup, you may need to contact the envelope secretary as this is quite unusual, you need to account for this Loose Cash in some way.

If you cannot contact the person for some reason, you should create the setup yourself. (I'm assuming v11.5 here)

1. Using the Contributions Entry screen, click on the Add Contributor.
2. Enter a first name of Loose Cash and a last name of Offerings, if you're using the Add Person wizard, skip to the bottom and click Next
3. Remove any Mr and Mrs that may have been added to the name, and enter the church's address. Leave the phone blank, and the mailing category set to "Visitor", or whatever your church uses to designate non-member visitors. Click Next
4. Set the gender to M or F, enter an Envelope number of 999 or 9999, depending on how large your church is. Then click the Finish button.
5. The envelope number is now ready to be used.