Understanding Disbursement Reports
Introduction
Disbursement reports created by Faith Direct staff are for parish use to determine how much money is going into their bank account for a particular time period. They are designed for parish staff to interpret and understand how much is going into their bank accounts each month. The report is concise, detailed and broken down into different sections based on payment type and collection names.
On the 4th and 15th of every month (or following business day if the 4th or 15th fall on a weekend/holiday), we process transactions for all donors across 700+ churches who are enrolled with Faith Direct. These transactions are for all recurring and offertory collections. While some churches process only on the 4th of the month, most churches partake in both, the 4th and 15th of the month to process donations for parishioners. When these funds are collected, it takes us exactly 4 business days to disburse these funds and make sure that we also factor in all the declined transactions.
During this 4 day period, we create disbursement reports which take into account all the transactions processed on the 4th and 15th, all the live gifts processed for the first or second half of the month, all the declined transactions and refunds, and all the Faith Direct fee deductions which includes the monthly fee and credit card fees. 4 business days after the 4th or 15th transaction date, disbursement reports are then ready and uploaded into the Church Admin website. This is when we disburse all the funds to the parish accounts. It could take a few additional business days for the transactions to show up in the parish bank accounts. Generally speaking, the reports will be available around the 10th or 20th of the month.
When we upload disbursement reports around 2 pm in the afternoon, we also ensure to send out emails to all our church clients that the reports are ready to download. Below is a template of what the disbursement report email looks like:
The things to note on this report are that if a church only processed transactions only on the 4th of the month, the live period will include all the live transactions (event or one time gift payments that process the same day they are made) for the entire previous month. See below.
However, if a church processed on the both, the 4th and 15th, the live period for the 4th report will be the second half of the previous month and the live period for the 15th report will be the first half of the current month. Examples for churches who partake in both transaction dates are below.
4th of the Month
15th of the Month
The first page of every disbursement report is the most important section because it gives you an overall summary of the entire report. The recurring and live transactions are listed separately on the top of the report and you will also get to know the total declined amount (amounts that did not process because of payment error or if the donor requested Faith Direct for a gift refund). The amounts on top are the total amounts before deductions.
Then you will get the breakdowns for each payment type - the total amount of transactions processed for each credit card type and the total amount for the ACH (bank) transactions. You will also be able to see all the credit card fee deductions as well as the Faith Direct Monthly fee charged to your parish. As of July 1st, 2018 the credit card fees will be the same for each card type, i.e., A fixed transaction fee of 2.35% and $0.25/item fee for all credit card payments.
After all the deductions are made, the total amount that is disbursed to your parish account will be the 'Total Disbursement'. That is the exact amount one should be looking at to see if it matches with the amount posted to their account.
Following the total disbursement there are a few lines where one can see the more breakdowns made for each collection made. This is usually done per request from the parish so if you are interested to see more breakdowns on the first page, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us. Additionally, if a parish has multiple bank accounts, there will be few additional lines which give the breakdowns for the amounts posted to each bank account. This will be useful if transactions coming in are spread across several accounts. Here is an example of what it will look like for a parish with several deposit accounts:
The following page of the disbursement report is the Appeal Summary Breakdown. This is where one can see what collections on Faith Direct are payments coming from.
The Appeal Summary Breakdown total will be the sum of the 'Total All Recurring Appeals' and the 'Total All Live Appeals' on the first page of the disbursement report.
The following pages will list the total ACH (bank) transactions. This section is broken down by appeals and further broken down by donor individual gifts pertaining to each collection. This gives a great insight on each person's contribution that makes up for the total giving amount.
The section following that lists the Credit Card Transactions. Once again the section is broken down by appeals and further broken down by donor individual gifts pertaining to each collection.
After the Credit Card Transactions section the next section is the Declines and Refunds section. This section is self-explanatory and gives you the breakdowns of all the transactions that were either declined or refunded.
The following section is the Suspended Users section where it lists all the users whose account has been suspended. There are 2 types of suspend accounts; Decline Suspension and User Suspension. Decline Suspension usually happens when the user entered incorrect payment information and so the account is automatically going to decline the processed transaction. User Suspension is when the payment is suspended by the user because they do not want to continue their giving or are skipping a few payments. Both these types of suspensions will be listed under this section.
Finally, the last section of the disbursement report is the Notes section. Under this section all collections will be listed where a donor added a note to that collection. Most of these collection types are one-time gift collections or special collections made by non-parishioners who made a one-time gift to Faith Direct. The note will usually give a description of what the gift is about. Sometimes donors who skipped a few months of payment also make a live one-time gift payment to make up for their missed gifts and include a note in there for the church to know what collection it was made for.
We hope this article gives you a good idea of how a disbursement report is interpreted.
The next set of articles will focus on additional Faith Direct reports/tools that are available on the Faith Direct Church Admin website. Next up is the donor export.
* Sample Disbursement Report for this article: