Can multiple contribution funds be applied to a pledge?

[goodshepherdlutheran]

We are using Power Church vs.11. We have several contribution fund numbers that are used for our general fund donations so that we can keep track of online giving, check and cash donations, and stock donations separately. For example, #100 is General Fund contributions, #101 is Simply Giving General Fund contributions, #103 is General Fund Stock Contributions. (Our council likes to see how members are giving.) Each contribution fund closes to a different income account under our general fund contributions so it's easy to see on the financial statements. It works great for us, except when I print their contribution statement and their contributions aren't always applied to their pledge. Is there a way for multiple contribution funds to be applied to one pledge? If they are set up with online giving I use the fund that is called Simply Giving General Fund for their pledge and they get applied to their pledge. The problem is when a member gives to the general fund in multiple forms which is happening more often now.
thanks

[NeilZ]

We are using Power Church vs.11. We have several contribution fund numbers that are used for our general fund donations so that we can keep track of online giving, check and cash donations, and stock donations separately. For example, #100 is General Fund contributions, #101 is Simply Giving General Fund contributions, #103 is General Fund Stock Contributions. (Our council likes to see how members are giving.) Each contribution fund closes to a different income account under our general fund contributions so it's easy to see on the financial statements. It works great for us, except when I print their contribution statement and their contributions aren't always applied to their pledge. Is there a way for multiple contribution funds to be applied to one pledge? If they are set up with online giving I use the fund that is called Simply Giving General Fund for their pledge and they get applied to their pledge. The problem is when a member gives to the general fund in multiple forms which is happening more often now.
thanks

In a word, no.

The system is designed so that a Pledge is for a specific fund, not a range of funds.

Examples: Capital Fund pledges - Operations Fund - etc.

I understand that you'd like to track such income via the Fund Accounting Statements, but as you noticed, it does mess up people's pledges. The main thing is that you need to make it easier for the Contributors to understand their statements. The church board can learn to work with other reports, they're a smaller subset of the users.

IMHO - donations of Stock and other securities should not be listed on a Contribution Statement anyway. The reason for that is normally a stock is either transferred, and thus becomes an asset and not part of normal Tithes & Offerings, or it is sold, and then the income should be tracked in a separate Income Account, but again, not tracked via the Contributions Module. In either case, the contributor should be able to deduct the value of the stock, either at the transferred value or as the value when it was sold. In this case a Contribution LETTER should be sent to the donor, with a copy kept at the church, showing this transaction.

If they would like the amount of this stock donation be applied to their pledge, then you would adjust the beginning balance of their pledge in the same manner as is recommended here https://www.powerchurch.com/forum/viewt ... =4&t=12135 .

As far as Online Contributions. Again, my advice is not to separate it out as a separate income account, and track all the income via one Contribution Fund used for Tithes & Offerings.

What you can do is whenever you get online giving, is list this type of giving as an Contribution Type of Online. This is one of the Contribution Types that Powerchurch is usually installed with. If you don't have that Contribution Type listed, you can add it via the Contributions -> Setup -> Maintain Custom Codes function.

When you do that, you can then create a report from Contributions, filtering for Online, to get a snapshot of online giving, and attach that to the financial reports. The nice thing about this report, and I tested this using the Monthly Contribution Totals report, is that you can get a either a detailed or summary report of ALL online giving to all the Contribution funds.

[goodshepherdlutheran]

Thank you! That's very helpful.

[goodshepherdlutheran]

Would you recommend reassigning the online contribution fund # 101 to contribution fund #100 now? I'm trying to figure out the easiest way to correct this. Reversing posted contributions from online giving #101 and reentering the contributions to #100 General Fund contributions will take quite awhile. If I do reassign the fund #101 to #100 would I first close the accounting month December 2015 so it won't alter the data in prior years? I want to change this but don't want to create a bigger problem!
thanks

[NeilZ]

Would you recommend reassigning the online contribution fund # 101 to contribution fund #100 now? I'm trying to figure out the easiest way to correct this. Reversing posted contributions from online giving #101 and reentering the contributions to #100 General Fund contributions will take quite awhile. If I do reassign the fund #101 to #100 would I first close the accounting month December 2015 so it won't alter the data in prior years? I want to change this but don't want to create a bigger problem!
thanks

Version 11.5 and I believe 11.5 allow you to merge Contribution Funds, as well as merge Funds Accounting accounts.

Any changes you do to the Contribution Funds will NOT affect Funds Accounting. They are two separate modules.

As far as merging the Funds Accounting accounts, I'm very sure that anything you do there will affect the history even though the months are closed. In fact, I'm not sure that the program will allow you to do anything other than make that account inactive. I would not worry about that for this year, then make it INACTIVE for 2017.

To Merge Contribution Funds, head to Contributions -> Reassign -> Reassign a Fund Number. You will then enter the number of the fund you want to merge (101) in the first box and enter the final fund (100) in the second.

All the data from fund 101 will then flow to fund 100. You'll have to run the Search for Contributions not applied to a Pledge function found at Contributions -> Pledges -> Search for Contributions not applied to a Pledge. This function is fairly good at finding contributions that fall within the proper pledge range.

Finally, doing this merge and search will NOT affect anything in Funds Accounting, nor will there be any type of transactions to post.

Hope this helps.

[goodshepherdlutheran]

Thanks again!