Handling Weekly Pledges in Years with 53 Sundays

Every few years, there will be 53 Sundays between January 1 and December 31. If you enter weekly pledges for this date range, they will be calculated against 53 Sundays. Just like in Payroll, in months where there is an extra pay week, PowerChurch Plus will calculate the total pledge against the total number of pledge occurrences in the specified date range.

There is a setting under File > Preferences > Contributions Setup, on the Pledges/Statements tab, to specify which day of the week pledges are calculated against. This setting can be changed to a different day of the week for the current year to get around the 53 Sundays problem. However, that would require you to go back and change that setting to Sunday the next year. This is the quickest method of working around the problem. Unfortunately, changing the setting back in the next year would then have the side effect of taking the previous year pledges back to 53 Sundays, making everyone's pledge have a balance owed.

The alternative to this is more work, but doesn't have the residual effects on future reporting. Instead of using the full January 1 to December 31 date range on your weekly pledges in the 53 Sunday year, use the previous Saturday as the ending date. Doing so cuts off the 53rd Sunday and the total pledge amount will be calculated accordingly.

There isn't a single end-all-be-all solution to this. Each method has its down-side. Set up the pledges in PowerChurch Plus on these years in a way that best suits your specific needs.