Accounting overview

Accounting connects giving to the church's books in QuickBooks Online. It never copies donors into QuickBooks. Instead it posts short, summarized entries: so much to each fund, so much in fees, so much paid to the bank. The bookkeeper sees clean deposits by fund, and donor details stay private in the giving system.

When to use this

• Weekly or monthly, to run the QuickBooks sync and check what it will post.
• At month-end, to reconcile Stripe's payouts with the bank statement.
• When the bookkeeper asks where a deposit in QuickBooks came from.

How money reaches QuickBooks

There are two paths, and both end in the operating bank account:

1. Online gifts (card and bank). Stripe collects the gifts and pays them to the bank in a payout, usually a couple of days later, after taking its fees. For each payout, the sync posts:
   • a journal entry for each day's gifts into an account called 1060 Stripe Clearing, with each fund's income on its own line, tagged with the fund's Class, and the fees as an expense;
   • one Transfer from Stripe Clearing to the operating bank account, for exactly the payout amount.
2. Cash and checks. When a batch is marked deposited, the sync posts one deposit entry straight to the operating bank, split by fund.

Because the Transfer equals the payout to the cent, the bank line from Stripe matches it exactly, and Stripe Clearing returns to zero once everything has arrived.

Read the overview

• Sync status at the top shows what's waiting to post, and when the sync last ran.
• Payouts and the amount paid to the bank so far.
• Journal entries, and whether every one balances (debits equal credits).
• Bank reconciliation: how many paid payouts are matched to a bank line.
• In transit: money Stripe has paid out that hasn't reached the bank yet. That's normal for a day or two.
• Fund summary: each fund's gifts, refunds and disputes, fees borne and net. Under the default policy the General Fund bears all fees.

Payouts and entries

Payouts and entries lists every payout, newest first. Open one to see:

• the journal entries it produces, each dated to the gift's business date, with every line;
• the Transfer to the bank, dated to the payout's arrival date;
• its contents: the individual gifts, refunds and fees inside it;
• the posting checks it passed. Any failure would block it from posting.

Good to know

• Summaries only. The sync never creates a QuickBooks customer for a donor and never changes Classes, accounts or other settings in QuickBooks. It uses the ones that exist.
• Posting rules are shared. The sandbox builds its entries with the same rules the live sync will use, so what you see here is what the bookkeeper will see.
• The sandbox posts nowhere. Every entry stays in your browser; the "company" it posts to is a pretend one.

Top tips

• Ask the bookkeeper to keep 1060 Stripe Clearing in view: if it isn't near zero a few days after month-end, something is waiting to be matched.
• When a QuickBooks deposit puzzles someone, find the payout by its amount and arrival date: its page shows every gift inside it.
• Run the sync after each Sunday's batch is deposited, so QuickBooks is never more than a week behind.

Troubleshooting

A payout says "In transit". Stripe has paid it but the bank hasn't shown it yet. Give it two business days.

An entry doesn't balance. It's blocked from posting. This shouldn't happen; send feedback from the payout's page with its reference number.