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Managing Donations

Enter Donations Manually

How you process donations from a service depends on how your church wants to do it. Here are some tips and tricks to consider:
  • Use a combination of volunteers and staff to count and stack all cash and checks.
  • Checks are sorted into stacks of no more than 50.
  • Checks are sorted into stacks based on designations (single designations to a specific congregation in one pile, single designations to a building campaign in another, mixed designations in another).
  • Check stacks are counted and tallied and a receipt from the calculator is attached to the stack (usually with the counter and verifier's initials on it).
  • Some sort of Excel spreadsheet is completed either on paper or computer with a listing of how many checks and the amount for each stack (include the type of stack).
  • Stacks are then scanned into the Batch Manager Tool as individual batches.
  • Batches are verified using one of the reports (most churches run the Batch Summary Report).
  • Once all numbers match, the deposit is made to the bank.
  1. In the navigation menu, click Contributions > Donations.
  2. Click New Donation.
  3. Complete all required fields.
    Tip: If MinistryPlatform doesn't immediately find the donor, select the ***Default Contact for now and enter any information about the donor into the Notes field. Refer to the assign donor process to find or create a donor.
  4. Enter the item number.
    Important: Do not complete the batch at this time.
  5. Click Save.
    The record returns to a read-only display, and the Distributions tab displays.
  6. Click New to create at least one distribution to indicate how the donor wants you to use the funds.
  7. Click Save for the new distribution, then click Close.
  8. Repeat these steps for any additional distributions the donor has indicated. Make sure the sum of the distribution amounts is the same as the donation amount.
  9. Once you complete all distributions, close the Donation record.
  10. Create any additional donations. To manually add recurring donations, you can use the Copy action and set the appropriate recurrence pattern. However, you should only do this if the recurring donation is already set up in Authorize.Net but needs to be added to the Platform.
  11. Review the donations you entered. Pay special attention to the donation amount and distribution amount to ensure they are the same.
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Last updated: February 21, 2025