Bank Deposit report for combination of Contr. and funds

[Brian Short]

We do one bank deposit a week and it usually combines the contributions and other cheques received for facility rental and the like. We also usually take $10 cash from the loose collection on Sunday and give it to the teenager who does the baby sitting. So far, we haven't found a way to print out one bank deposit slip that matches the 'contributions' and the fund accounting.
We are trying to do two bank slips, but we still fall $10 short on the contributions bank slip because of the $10 cash taken out.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

[NeilZ]

We do one bank deposit a week and it usually combines the contributions and other cheques received for facility rental and the like. We also usually take $10 cash from the loose collection on Sunday and give it to the teenager who does the baby sitting. So far, we haven't found a way to print out one bank deposit slip that matches the 'contributions' and the fund accounting.
We are trying to do two bank slips, but we still fall $10 short on the contributions bank slip because of the $10 cash taken out.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

I would not give the $10 out of the plate to the babysitter. I'd do a straight post of contribtuions to fund accounting, then issue a check, or give out of petty cash.

We do have two separate deposits, one for Sunday Contributions (which is dropped off by our counters in the night deposit at the bank), and one done by our treasurer of all other income.

This keeps the system straight, and is easy to audit.

IMHO ... The $10 right out of the plate could look very suspicious to an outside auditor.

[jeffkoke]

IMHO ... The $10 right out of the plate could look very suspicious to an outside auditor.

I second Neil's caution!

Any money put into the offering plate that does not get deposited is actually in violation of IRS rulings. If you distribute that money, you are now considered a bank...and banks don't get 501(c)3 status, as they are a business.

I'd get that process changed post haste. Write her a check.

Jeff

[Randy B]

Wise counsel has been offered here about not paying directly out of the offering plate. It is not a good practice and there is no record. To solve your problem, I would suggest you enter the entire collection in your system. No ten dollar difference. I am not sure why the church is paying a baby sitter, but assuming it is a legitimate church expense, why not pay that out of petty cash? You would have a record of the expense and it would be legitimate expense assuming you meet other tax laws.

[Dish-Man]

I posted a question in another thread about non-contributions such as paying for church meals on Wednesday night, reimbursing expense accounts, etc.

Neil, do you specifically keep all this money separate in deposits/counting? Right now, we put ANY money that comes into the church into our safe (sufficiently labeled and separated of course) along with the Sunday contributions and ALL the money is counted at the same time by our Counting Committees. We have just begun to use a check reader to scan checks. I guess that would simplify matters with deposit slips that would match the "Bank Deposit Slip" out of PowerChurch since it would ONLY contain contributions and NOT reimbursements or other income. This would be a change (and possibly more work) for our Counting Committees (unless the financial secretary were to count any non-contributions)

[Dish-Man]

another question. Is the only place that the contributor's check number shows up is the "Bank Deposit Slip, Unposted Contribution" report? I thought it would show up on the Contributor's Giving Statement. Will I lose the ability to see check numbers as soon as I post the contributions? Sounds like I should make a copy of the deposit slip report and keep it if that's the case.

[NeilZ]

I posted a question in another thread about non-contributions such as paying for church meals on Wednesday night, reimbursing expense accounts, etc.

Neil, do you specifically keep all this money separate in deposits/counting? Right now, we put ANY money that comes into the church into our safe (sufficiently labeled and separated of course) along with the Sunday contributions and ALL the money is counted at the same time by our Counting Committees. We have just begun to use a check reader to scan checks. I guess that would simplify matters with deposit slips that would match the "Bank Deposit Slip" out of PowerChurch since it would ONLY contain contributions and NOT reimbursements or other income. This would be a change (and possibly more work) for our Counting Committees (unless the financial secretary were to count any non-contributions)

See my answers to this in your original thread on this.

[NeilZ]

another question. Is the only place that the contributor's check number shows up is the "Bank Deposit Slip, Unposted Contribution" report? I thought it would show up on the Contributor's Giving Statement. Will I lose the ability to see check numbers as soon as I post the contributions? Sounds like I should make a copy of the deposit slip report and keep it if that's the case.

Some churches maintain these numbers, some don't. We don't as it would be one more thing that our counters would have to enter via the manual check entry. The function must be turned on via Preferences => Contribtuions on the FILE menu. If you have the access to Post contributions to Fund Accounting, you can turn this on yourself.

We run all loose offering checks through the check reader. It works much faster when you don't have an envelope and have to look up numbers. The reader brings it up immediately. For those contributions we get in an offering envelope, our counter teams has one member reading off the envelope number, fund(s) to enter and amounts, the other does manual data entry. We find its just as fast as the check reader, and the one team member can open envelopes and put cash aside so we can do all checks first. This saves us from the issue of accidently putting in cash as a check, and vice versa.

[Dish-Man]

thanks Neil, guess I totally missed that setting. I went through the Preferences this weekend, but didn't see it at all. I'm the administrator over all of PowerChurch at my church, so I went ahead and changed it there.

Another question, would you be able to write a custom report to sort the "Bank Deposit Slip" by either contributor's last name or envelope number (even though the envelope number doesn't show up on the report)? I know some folks say that they sort their checks alphabetically, but that seems like a lot of work if they are just trying to get the deposit slip to be sorted alphabetically. It seems to print it out in the order of the checks scanned (which is good if you keep them in order), but I wonder if you can sort the entries through a custom report.

[NeilZ]

thanks Neil, guess I totally missed that setting. I went through the Preferences this weekend, but didn't see it at all. I'm the administrator over all of PowerChurch at my church, so I went ahead and changed it there.

Another question, would you be able to write a custom report to sort the "Bank Deposit Slip" by either contributor's last name or envelope number (even though the envelope number doesn't show up on the report)? I know some folks say that they sort their checks alphabetically, but that seems like a lot of work if they are just trying to get the deposit slip to be sorted alphabetically. It seems to print it out in the order of the checks scanned (which is good if you keep them in order), but I wonder if you can sort the entries through a custom report.

The bank deposit slip lists checks in the way they are entered. This makes it very easy to go back to verify the data entry against the actual check, which we do prior to the finalization of the deposit. Again, this is to make sure that the data entered, matched what was listed on the check in both the numeric and written portions.

The bank would also use this to verify checks, and having it in the order the checks are stacked, makes it eaier for them also.

If you're using the slip for anything else, you could export it to MS Excel format by creating the report for the screen, clicking on the diskette icon to save, select Excel format. Then you can mess with the data anyway you want !!

[jeffkoke]

Another question, would you be able to write a custom report to sort the "Bank Deposit Slip" by either contributor's last name or envelope number (even though the envelope number doesn't show up on the report)? I know some folks say that they sort their checks alphabetically, but that seems like a lot of work if they are just trying to get the deposit slip to be sorted alphabetically. It seems to print it out in the order of the checks scanned (which is good if you keep them in order), but I wonder if you can sort the entries through a custom report.

Jay.
You do realize that the Bank Deposit Slip goes away once the contributions have been posted, right?

Jeff

[Dish-Man]

jeff, no I didn't know that. We just started using the check reader, so I'm new to the bank deposit slip from PowerChurch. Guess I should have known since it says "unposted contributions" in the report title!! I'll make sure we keep a copy of it before we post.

[jeffkoke]

Jay.

The finance committee generates three reports that are combined with the envelopes, credit card report and tally sheets. All are turned in for final validation prior to posting the contributios for that week.

They are:
- Funds Report, unposted (for the date entered)
- Bank Deposit Slip, Unposted Contributions
- Contributions Report, sequence entered (for the date entered)

I think I remembered the title of that last one correctly.

[Dish-Man]

OK, been working with the check reader for couple of months now and absolutely love it!! (so does our Financial Secretary!!) I have another question though that's becoming a pain for us. If I have different funds that people donate to that are DIFFERENT bank accounts, it still only prints out ONE deposit slip with all the checks for every different fund. I have been resorting to separating out all the different fund donations and doing them separately. The only problem is that for me to be able to print out ANOTHER deposit slip for a SECOND fund, I have to POST the first set of contributions since you can't sort on fund number (or really ANYTHING when you generate a deposit slip report) which is not what I really want to do. I would rather have more time to look at the report BEFORE I post it and make sure the bank deposit agrees with the PC report before I post it. Am I wrong to think that you should be able to sort on a fund number, date, etc. to generate the bank deposit report rather than just EVERY UNPOSTED contribution? This seems like a no brainer to me. How are others handling this? If there's no answer, I'll be providing it in the form of a wish list.

[NeilZ]

OK, been working with the check reader for couple of months now and absolutely love it!! (so does our Financial Secretary!!) I have another question though that's becoming a pain for us. If I have different funds that people donate to that are DIFFERENT bank accounts, it still only prints out ONE deposit slip with all the checks for every different fund. I have been resorting to separating out all the different fund donations and doing them separately. The only problem is that for me to be able to print out ANOTHER deposit slip for a SECOND fund, I have to POST the first set of contributions since you can't sort on fund number (or really ANYTHING when you generate a deposit slip report) which is not what I really want to do. I would rather have more time to look at the report BEFORE I post it and make sure the bank deposit agrees with the PC report before I post it. Am I wrong to think that you should be able to sort on a fund number, date, etc. to generate the bank deposit report rather than just EVERY UNPOSTED contribution? This seems like a no brainer to me. How are others handling this? If there's no answer, I'll be providing it in the form of a wish list.

The bank deposit report has nothing to do with the funds within PC+, all it does is list the checks as they were entered. It is as if you were writing down on a regular deposit slip every check that was entered. Anything else is internal to the way the church operates. We encourage people to only write one check to cover all pledges and contributions, and just mark on the check, or the envelope the amounts to go to each fund.

We have two checking accounts and only two checking accounts. Everything gets posted to our money market account: operating fund, building fund, organ fund, etc. The system keeps that money straight, and the treasurer moves the operating funds to the checking account used to pay operating bills on an auto-transfer, and manually transfers online when needed.

Again, PC+ handles this transfer internally, while the bank does the automatic transfer. We looked at having different bank accounts, and decided that it was too unwieldy,

In other words, we didn't see that there was a need to have different accounts for each fund. The system can do all the work for you.

That said, why do you have separate bank accounts for each fund ??