General Offerings Question?

[melloby]

Do you assign envelope numbers for offerings that remains after you record individual offerings? e.g. you have collected 200.00 total offering, but your individual conftributions is 150.00, the balance of 50.00 comes from visitors or non members who do not have envelope numbers. How do your record the balance of 50.00?

The reason I ask is I assigned an envelope number for the offering balance, but this shows up in the church directory report? ( Total Offerings).

It appears that you have to have a envelope number to post in the contributions module.

[NeilZ]

Do you assign envelope numbers for offerings that remains after you record individual offerings? e.g. you have collected 200.00 total offering, but your individual conftributions is 150.00, the balance of 50.00 comes from visitors or non members who do not have envelope numbers. How do your record the balance of 50.00?

The reason I ask is I assigned an envelope number for the offering balance, but this shows up in the church directory report? ( Total Offerings).

It appears that you have to have a envelope number to post in the contributions module.

You should have a envelope number, set aside for "Loose Cash Offerings". While it does say cash, we also use it occasionally for checks less than $50 for visitors from out of state. Their check is their receipt for the contribution, and we don't have to track them in the system with a number.

This was also covered in an older Tales from Tech 2 column that can be found int the archives:

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN

Sometimes I'm asked what to do about money that's found on the floor or at the bottom of the collection plate when you have no idea who it's from. Certainly, you can't just stick it in your pocket (yes, I'm talking to you now). You've got to enter it into Contributions. But, what envelope number do you give credit to?

What many churches do is set up a non-existent person (in a non-existent family) with an easy to remember envelope number and they give that person credit for the contribution.

You can call the person anything you want, but some of my favorites include Johnny or Lucy Cash. (Get it? Lucy Cash. Loose Cash. That still makes me laugh.)

As a side note here, you might choose to give them an envelope number outside of the range of numbers you've given your members so that you can exclude them from reports or when you print statements. (Of course, you might want them on reports. I don't know. It's up to you.) Either way, you might give them the church's address in case you accidentally send out a statement or print a label for them. You might also want to exclude them from mailouts and Membership reports, but again, that's up to you.

Hope this helps.

[melloby]

Thx Neil Z.


Unfortunately I made up envelope numbers for various church ministries:

Men's
Youth
Woman
Sunday School and others

I also made an envelope number for "Total Offerings" to record spare change or offering that I could not allocate to individual contributors.

How can I rectify this situation? I would like to have one dummy envelope to record the spare contributions like "Loose Cash Offering".

[NeilZ]

Thx Neil Z.


Unfortunately I made up envelope numbers for various church ministries:

Men's
Youth
Woman
Sunday School and others

I also made an envelope number for "Total Offerings" to record spare change or offering that I could not allocate to individual contributors.

How can I rectify this situation? I would like to have one dummy envelope to record the spare contributions like "Loose Cash Offering".

Simple ... make up the one dummy envelope. As I said, I use 99 as we begiin our envelopes at 101.

You're going to have to create the dummy family record, as well as the dummy personal record. Move all the above dummy records from the original dummy family records to the Lucy Cash family record. Then do an envelope number reassignment.

So here's the example:

Loose Cash - 99
Mens - 101
Women's - 102

Move Mens and Women's to Loose Cash, then reassign 101 to 99, then do 102 to 99.
PC+ will move all the contributions from the 101 and 102 to the 99 envelope number. You can then delete the Mens and Women's personal records, as well as the family records you created for them.

[melloby]

Thx Neil Z. I will implement this suggestion ASAP and let you know how it goes.

Thx

[jeffkoke]

How do your record the balance of 50.00?

The reason I ask is I assigned an envelope number for the offering balance, but this shows up in the church directory report? ( Total Offerings).

It appears that you have to have a envelope number to post in the contributions module.

We have reserved envelope number 10000 and have it labeled as "Cash In." This is basically an unclaimed contribution. What this means is that there is no one person to which we attribute the monies given.

Make sense?

Jeff

[Randy B]

Melloby:

I use a little different approach. I established three envelopes called Sunday Morning, Sunday Evening, and Wednesday Evening. This allow me to track undesignated or plate offerings by service. That way when a service is cancelled due to bad weather or etc., it allowed me to determine for people the average collections per type of service.

[jeffkoke]

Melloby:

I use a little different approach. I established three envelopes called Sunday Morning, Sunday Evening, and Wednesday Evening. This allow me to track undesignated or plate offerings by service. That way when a service is cancelled due to bad weather or etc., it allowed me to determine for people the average collections per type of service.

That works!

We have contribution funds labeled: AM Service, PM Service, FTH (Wednesday service) and track the numbers and averages within the contributions module.

Jeff

[melloby]

Thx for all you comments. However, I tried to reassigned more than one envelope to my " Lucy Cash" account and it appears that PCP+ only allows you to transfer one envelope to another.

When I attempted to try another I was told that the family already exist or the envelope is in use.

Thx

[jeffkoke]

Thx for all you comments. However, I tried to reassigned more than one envelope to my " Lucy Cash" account and it appears that PCP+ only allows you to transfer one envelope to another.

When I attempted to try another I was told that the family already exist or the envelope is in use.

Thx

All of your envelopes must exist (be located) in the same "family."

Once they are all there, you should be able to merge the envelope numbers to the one you want to keep permanently.

Jeff

[NeilZ]

Thx for all you comments. However, I tried to reassigned more than one envelope to my " Lucy Cash" account and it appears that PCP+ only allows you to transfer one envelope to another.

When I attempted to try another I was told that the family already exist or the envelope is in use.

Thx

All of your envelopes must exist (be located) in the same "family."

Once they are all there, you should be able to merge the envelope numbers to the one you want to keep permanently.

Jeff

Yep ... Melloby missed that part of my message ...

You're going to have to create the dummy family record, as well as the dummy personal record. Move all the above dummy records from the original dummy family records to the Lucy Cash family record. Then do an envelope number reassignment.