Church Donation Software: Four Crucial Elements!

By Author: Stephen Hendy
Total Articles: 2
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When churches or any other non-profit organizations are looking for church donation software, they should make a checklist of the specific functionality which they want immediately. Smaller organizations and church may not be ready for online donations; however; the availability of this option makes them to rethink. Some key elements are:

Entry of Data – Technology has assisted contribution entry in various ways to get data into church donation software. Manual data entry; data file upload, and the ability to update donor’s records for online and EFT donations seamlessly are some of the USP’s of data. Moreover, mistakes happen, and contribution corrections should be easy to make. The process should permit you to modify the giving date, fund assignment, check/cash tracking, comments, amount, or remove the transaction altogether. Amalgamation into the church accounting module from contributions eliminates additional fundamental entry mistakes and time for double entering during posting.

Pledging – Pledge tracking by the fund(s) is a crucial way for the church to know how much they can expect to come into ...
... the firm. Pledging can advise churches when people are falling behind. It can also advise overall how much donations are ahead or short of the total pledge for the particular year. Pledging on various year funds with multiple donor commitment date ranges is essential.

IRS Statements – Entering data is pointless if the system cannot provide an appropriate IRS statement for donors. Churches should be able to email statements or print that includes the pledge amount, church logo, different formatting styles, a personal message, etc. Guidelines for producing the statement can vary such as status codes, date range, funds to include, people that have given, non-givers, and people that have pledged but have not given, etc.

Tax Type Categories – Tax Exempt, Taxable or IRA, should categorize all the funds to allow removal of the specific fund during IRS statement preparation. The organization should be able to add or change the fund names at any time. For example, a taxable fund is what - money collected for coffee or donuts and a tax-exempt fund is money given with no return of goods or services, and donors expect a donation statement. Additionally, the IRA contribution is when someone donates his or her IRA proceeds to the organization.

Conclusion
Church donation software is a crucial aspect of any church and should have the most aerodynamic processes in place. It should also include some of the basic concepts above for starters and additional features like a link to an acceptable fund accounting package. Extra features include transferring money from one envelope to another, ability to change envelope numbers, print deposit slips, and create reoccurring batches.

The author of the article is working with Data Developments – top destination for software needs of churches and charities.