Giving overview

Giving brings every gift together: online gifts through the church's own Stripe account, cash and checks from the Sunday offering, and recurring gifts. From here you can see the totals by fund, look up any gift, and get to batches, refunds, recurring gifts and year-end statements.

When to use this

• To answer "how is giving this year?" at a glance.
• To check how a fund or the building campaign is doing.
• To find a particular gift when a donor calls with a question.
• To see what donors see on the website's give page.

Read the overview

The tiles along the top show the year so far, the number of gifts and giving households, active recurring gifts, and what processing fees have cost (and how much donors chose to cover).

Below them:

• Gifts by month is gross giving, before fees and refunds.
• Refunds, voids and open batches lists anything that changes a total, so nothing is a surprise.
• By fund shows each fund's gifts, its share of the total, and what reaches the fund after fees. Each fund matches a Class in QuickBooks.
• The campaign card (when there is one) shows pledges, what has been given toward them, and what remains.

The give page

Give page preview shows the public give page exactly as donors see it. A donor:

1. picks an amount, or types another;
2. chooses a fund (each fund has a short description, so donors know where their gift goes);
3. chooses how often: once, every week or every month;
4. can tick cover the processing fee, so the church receives the whole gift;
5. continues to Stripe's secure checkout page to enter their card or bank details.

Card and bank details are typed on Stripe's page, never on ours, and the church stores only Stripe's reference numbers. In the sandbox, a Simulate a successful test payment button stands in for Stripe, and the gift appears in Gifts straight away.

Processing fees and covering them

Stripe charges a small fee on each card or bank gift. The give page shows an estimate as the donor chooses: cards (including Apple Pay and Google Pay) cost more than a bank transfer (ACH), which is capped. The rates shown in the sandbox are assumptions until the church's Stripe pricing is confirmed.

If the donor ticks cover the processing fee, the fee is added on top, so the fund receives the full amount they meant to give. Otherwise the fee comes out of the gift. Under the church's default fee policy, the General Fund bears all fees, so restricted funds always receive the full gift; the church's accountant confirms the policy.

The donor chooses the actual payment method on Stripe's page; the choice on our page only sets the estimate.

Find a gift

1. Open the Gifts tab.
2. Search by donor name, gift reference or check number, or narrow by fund, method, one-time or recurring, status, date range, or where it was recorded.
3. The bar above the list totals what you've filtered: given, refunded or charged back, and kept.

From a gift you can open the donor's statement, or refund or void it (see Refunds and voids).

Good to know

• Gifts are never edited. A mistake is corrected with a refund or a void, which is its own record. The original stays, so the books and the donor's statement always agree.
• Statuses: Succeeded is a normal gift; Refunded or Partly refunded has a refund against it; Voided was removed from a batch before it was deposited; Disputed, lost is a card chargeback the church lost, and Dispute won one it won.
• Stripe test mode. Everything here is simulated: no card is charged and no money moves.

Top tips

• Use the Status filter set to "Refunds, voids and disputes" before month-end: it's the short list of everything that will need explaining.
• When a donor calls about "a gift on the 14th", search their name and set From and To to that week, rather than scrolling.
• Encourage bank (ACH) giving for recurring gifts: the fees are far lower, and the church keeps more of every gift.

Troubleshooting

A gift I recorded in a batch isn't in the totals yet. Check the batch: gifts count as soon as they're keyed, but the deposit only reaches QuickBooks once the batch is marked deposited.

A donor says they were charged twice. Search their name for that day. If there really are two identical gifts, refund one with the reason "Duplicate gift".

The give page shows a fund I don't recognise. Funds and their descriptions come from the church's settings. Ask the finance lead before telling a donor which fund to use.