When churches are looking for church donation software, they should make a list of the specific functionality they want immediately. Additionally, what needs exist in the next 5-10 years for the church donation software? Smaller organizations and church plants may not be ready for online donations however; the availability of this option later is crucial.
Entry of Data – Technology has helped contribution entry in various ways to get data into church donation software. Church donation software should include manual data entry, data file upload, and the ability to update donors records for online and EFT donations seamlessly. Additionally, mistakes happen and contribution corrections should be easy to make. The process should allow you to modify the giving date, fund assignment, check/cash tracking, comments, amount, or remove the transaction completely. Integration into the church accounting module from contributions removes additional key entry mistakes and time for double entering during posting.
Pledging – Pledge tracking by fund(s) is an important way for the church to know how much can they expect to come into the organization. Pledging can tell churches when people are falling behind throughout the year. It can also advise overall how much donations are ahead or short of the total pledge for the year. Pledging on multiple year funds with various donor commitment date ranges is essential.
IRS Statements – Entering data is useless if the system cannot provide an IRS statement for donors. Churches should be able to print or email statements, with the later saving on postage. Other options on statements include the pledge amount, church logo, different formatting styles, a personal message and comments. Criteria for producing the statement can vary such as: status codes, date range, sort options, funds to include, people that have given, non givers, people that have pledged but have not given, etc.
Tax Type Categories – Tax Exempt, Taxable or IRA, should categorize all the funds to allow removal of certain fund during IRS statement preparation. The organization should be able to add or change the fund names at any time but still maintain the category. A taxable fund example is money collected for coffee or donuts on a Sunday. A tax-exempt fund is money given with no return of good or services and donors expect a donation statement. Additionally, the IRA contribution is when someone donates his or her IRA proceeds to the organization.
Church donation software is an important aspect to any church and should have the most streamlined processes in place. It should also include some of the basic concepts above for starters and additional features like a link to an acceptable fund accounting package. Additional features include transferring monies from one envelope to another, ability to change envelope numbers, print deposit slips, and create reoccurring batches. Icon Systems’ IconCMO can help churches with this process and we look forward to hearing any comments you may have on this topic.
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