ParishSOFT Giving: Automatic vs Manual Funding
With the upgrade from Faith Direct to ParishSOFT giving, you now have automatic funding.
What does this mean? As transactions settle, they are automatically deposited into your bank account. The deposits themselves are the gross dollar donations, meaning that the transaction fees are not removed and instead they are billed to you once a month. Each deposit (batch) has it's own reporting (please see the Contribution Export article found HERE) which can make some things easier, but it may not be for everyone. You would then reconcile what was deposited into your bank with dollar amount that the batch has.
Below is what it looks like when you have automatic funding:
Now that I've been upgraded, I've tried it, and I'm really not a fan, so what are my options?
The only other option would be Manual Funding. What that means is instead of the funds automatically being deposited as they settle, the system would collect the funds and you would go in when you're ready and disburse the funds yourself. You have control and you're able to disburse as frequently as you would like.
PLEASE NOTE: if you want to utilize PayPal, PayPal does not allow manual funding. Meaning all other funds can be processed manually, but you will get the daily deposits for those transactions. That is a PayPal stipulation that we are not able to adjust.
What's the major difference? Well beyond being able to disburse the funds as you would like, they would be net deposits, not gross. This means that the transaction fees would be deducted from the deposit like it was with Faith Direct. Below is an example of what it would look like if you have manual funding:
- Available funds means that those are the monies that have been processed and is ready to deposit in to your account.
Once you click the Disburse button, the amount available will then be deposited in to your bank account Gross amount is the total that was donated. Please note that the report will not show up until the funds have been deposited in to your account. Once you click ‘disburse’, it can take up to 48 hours for the reports to be available.
- Gross amount: shows you how much total the amount was for
- Fees withheld: shows you how much was deducted
- PLEASE NOTE: It is recommended that on the last day of the month to go in and disburse any available funds. This will not only ensure that all funds donated within that month are disbursed to you within that month, but it will also ensure that all transaction fees are paid in the same month that the donations processed. If you do not do that, any fees for transactions that occurred but have not been paid, will be automatically deducted from your bank account on the last day of the month. This to keep all fee accounting correct. The fees would then not be deducted from the next disbursement of funds in which the transaction would be deposited in to your bank account.
- Important: Clicking disburse on the last day of the month helps minimizes, but may not completely eliminate, the once-monthly billing. There is always the option that a donor may make a gift after you have hit the disburse button.
- PLEASE NOTE: It is recommended that on the last day of the month to go in and disburse any available funds. This will not only ensure that all funds donated within that month are disbursed to you within that month, but it will also ensure that all transaction fees are paid in the same month that the donations processed. If you do not do that, any fees for transactions that occurred but have not been paid, will be automatically deducted from your bank account on the last day of the month. This to keep all fee accounting correct. The fees would then not be deducted from the next disbursement of funds in which the transaction would be deposited in to your bank account.
- Net Amount: shows you what was then deposited into your bank account
- PLEASE NOTE: this only deducts the processing and transaction fees from your gross dollars, the monthly Managed Giving (formerly Faith Direct) fee is invoiced separately. Find your Monthly Invoice information HERE
The View Transactions will take you to a screen where you can view all the transactions in that deposit.
Download to PDS (or whatever export option you have set up) will be formatted in the option that you need the export in so that you can then import those gifts to your management system.
Save or Print Details is where you can download and print a report that shows the gross amount and then it will give you the gross, fee and then net per fund.
It is important to note that if you do manual funding there is no email notification that funds are ready, you are responsible for checking your account to see if there is anything available to disburse.
It is also important to note that these are deposits for anything that was transacted, whether it be event payments, donations and/or refunds. The events is especially to note because for the contribution export download, in Faith Direct we had a way to suppress the events from the contribution export, but in ParishSoft Giving there is currently not a way to do this. You will also be able to export the information from ParishSoft without updating donor envelope numbers. It is highly recommended that you go to your Recurring Gifts report weekly and see any donors that do not have an envelope number and add it to their donor profile (click on their name and then click update profile and add their env number). This will help ensure that you have your recurring giver's envelope numbers on the exports.
It is also highly recommended that you have gone through your donors and merged any duplicates. CLICK HERE to review that process.
For events, those funds will not have fund numbers and their donors may not have envelope numbers as they are not registered. We recommend that once you export the contribution export from the system that you delete those rows from import spreadsheet. If you don't want to do that, another option would be to go into your church management system and add a random collection fund and envelope number (IE 99999) and then in Fund Management and add the fund number for that collection and under the donors add the envelope number so that want you can still import without having to delete rows from your spreadsheet.
If you would like to change to manual funding, please reach out to your Client Relations Manager or email managed.giving@ministrybrands.com.