Electronic Contributions

Contributions, Faith Promises

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pastorjj
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Location: Abundant Life Church of Winchester
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Electronic Contributions

Post by pastorjj »

We just established a PayPal account on our web site so folk can make contributions via the Internet. How would you suggest that we deal with these transfers to our account. We will have to count these contributions as cash but how would we deal with the contributors in the contribution modual?

Zaphod
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Post by Zaphod »

PowerChurch doesn't care how you get the money, it just gives you the ability to track that you received it. There's no way to do an automatic transfer into PowerChurch, you'd still have to enter it through Enter Contributions like any other entry.
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NeilZ
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Post by NeilZ »

Zaphod wrote:PowerChurch doesn't care how you get the money, it just gives you the ability to track that you received it. There's no way to do an automatic transfer into PowerChurch, you'd still have to enter it through Enter Contributions like any other entry.
Here's a way we did it at APC. When we setup our PayPal account, we directed the information statements to a 'forwarding email account' that we setup through our website ISP (IE: onlinepayment@yadda.org).

This then forwards the email to both our financial secretary who handles the contributions, but also to our treasurer, so she knows that this money will appear in the account.

The financial secretary then enters the contribution or payment, posts the contributions to the account, and the accounting module picks up the additions.

Note .. the PayPal entries are done outside of the normal Sunday contributions, as we want to keep these separate from anything that goes in the 'deposit slip' report.

Hope this helps.
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

pastorjj
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Post by pastorjj »

Ok - Thanks -
Another related problem. PayPal charges 2.9% on the dollar and .30 per transaction for its services. That means that if I give $10.00 my church will only get $9.41. The 59 cent difference can not be considered as a charitable contribution because a service was rendered. (Check out page 20 in Publication 1828 for "quid pro quo" contributions). How do you handle the statement to your giver that he gave $10 and the fact you only got $9.41 to deposit - have you set up an expense account to deal with the difference and do you make a double entry contribution statement like "gave $10 but was charged .59 cents" crediting the bank account for $10.00 and then entering a .59 cent expense???????? At this pont I am simply giving a contribution statement for the amount after the expense and telling people how to figure their actual contribution on our website.

NeilZ
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Post by NeilZ »

pastorjj wrote:Ok - Thanks -
Another related problem. PayPal charges 2.9% on the dollar and .30 per transaction for its services. That means that if I give $10.00 my church will only get $9.41. The 59 cent difference can not be considered as a charitable contribution because a service was rendered. (Check out page 20 in Publication 1828 for "quid pro quo" contributions). How do you handle the statement to your giver that he gave $10 and the fact you only got $9.41 to deposit - have you set up an expense account to deal with the difference and do you make a double entry contribution statement like "gave $10 but was charged .59 cents" crediting the bank account for $10.00 and then entering a .59 cent expense???????? At this pont I am simply giving a contribution statement for the amount after the expense and telling people how to figure their actual contribution on our website.
We usually tell anyone using PayPal that it will cost them an additional $1.00 for handling any type of payment through PayPal, so if they want to use it, we tack on the $1.00.

As you can tell, we don't want people using PayPal for normal contributions.
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

pastorjj
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Post by pastorjj »

Yes, I sent out e-mails to all our people telling them to use the internet site to give their contributions only if necessary. When someone uses PayPal and after giving their donations, they go to our "Thank you" page and I tell them how to figure their actual contribution. I recently read in the "Church &n Clergy Tax Guide - 2004 edition" that the IRS is requiring such a written notice for so called "quid pro quo" donations. It is my hope that the web page which is afterall printable will do to meet this requirement. We are not giving credit for the service costs so we should not have to track them in our contribution statements as "non tax deductibe contributions.
With all that said - I have a question for the powerchurch people. We have started a ministry to people suffering from cancer and I have set up a fund for that ministry. We will be getting love offerings more than likely through the internet - which means people from outside of our church membership - is there a way to seperate these contributions as distinct from the normal chruch membership

Kristi
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Re: Electronic Contributions

Post by Kristi »

pastorjj wrote:We just established a PayPal account on our web site so folk can make contributions via the Internet. How would you suggest that we deal with these transfers to our account. We will have to count these contributions as cash but how would we deal with the contributors in the contribution modual?

Pastorjj,

I just began entering transfers. What I do is enter the transfer as cash on a date other than the Monday date we make our "real" deposits so the transfered amount won't add to what my money counters counted on Monday and make their count appear wrong, I then run a Bank Deposit Slip and then post to Update Fund Accounting.

This seems to work...then again I only have ONE person taking advantage of this process at the moment.

Kristi
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." Proverbs 3:5

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