Giving & Finance Overview

TimelyChurch provides a complete giving and finance solution that helps your church track donations, manage funds, run pledge campaigns, generate giving statements, and accept online donations -- all tightly integrated with the built-in accounting module.

What the Giving Module Includes

Donation Management

Record every gift your church receives, whether it comes in as cash during a Sunday service, a mailed check, or an online credit card payment. Each donation is assigned a unique Giving ID (e.g., DON-2026-00001) and can be split across multiple funds in a single entry.

Giving Funds

Create designated categories for your donations -- General Fund, Building Fund, Missions, Youth Ministry, Benevolence, and more. Funds let you track where money is directed and give donors the ability to choose where their gift goes.

Online Giving via Stripe Connect

Accept credit card, debit card, and recurring donations through a branded public giving page powered by Stripe. Members can give one-time or set up weekly, monthly, or yearly recurring gifts.

Pledge Campaigns

Launch fundraising campaigns with goals, timelines, cover images, and public pages. Track individual pledges and direct donations against the campaign goal.

Deposit Batches

Group cash and check donations into deposit batches that mirror your bank deposits. Close and reconcile batches, then create accounting transactions automatically.

Giving Statements

Generate year-end giving statements for tax purposes. Preview, download as PDF, or email statements to individual donors. Bulk-generate statements for all donors at once.

Donation Receipts

Download or email individual donation receipts as PDF attachments immediately after recording a gift.

Export and Reporting

Export donation data to CSV, Excel, or PDF. Filter by date range, payment method, fund, and more. Summary statistics are displayed on the giving dashboard.

How Giving Integrates with Accounting

Every donation you record automatically creates corresponding income transactions in the accounting module through the Donation Accounting Service. Here is how the integration works:

• Single-fund donations create one income transaction for the full amount.
• Split donations (allocated across multiple funds) create one income transaction per fund allocation, so each fund's income is tracked separately.
• Deposit batches, when marked as deposited, create an income transaction against the bank account you select.
• Accounting transactions reference the donation's Giving ID as the reference number, making it easy to trace any transaction back to its source donation.
• The system uses your church's default income account (account number 4000, "Tithes & Offerings") for donation entries. If that account does not exist, it falls back to any active income account.
• When you update or delete a donation, the related accounting transactions are automatically synced or removed (reconciled transactions are preserved).

Refunds Stay in Sync Too

When you refund an online (Stripe) gift, TimelyChurch handles the cleanup for you instead of leaving it to manual reconciliation. Open the donation and click Refund (available on Stripe card donations that have not already been refunded) to process a full or partial refund. The refund then cascades automatically:

• The donation is marked refunded (with the refund amount and date recorded).
• Each fund allocation on the gift is reversed.
• Offsetting accounting entries are created so your books stay balanced.
• If the gift was applied to a pledge, the pledge's fulfilled amount is reversed.
• The refunded amount is excluded from the donor's giving statement.

Refunds initiated directly in Stripe (for example, a chargeback or a refund issued from the Stripe dashboard) flow back through the same cascade via Stripe webhooks, so your records match what happened in Stripe either way.

Plan and Permissions

Giving and finance features are part of TimelyChurch's Pro plan. The following modules require a Pro subscription: Giving, Funds, Pledges, Giving Statements, Reports, Budgets, and Accounting. On the Starter and Growth plans these appear in the Finances section of the sidebar as locked items with an upgrade prompt rather than opening.

Within the Pro plan, each finance module is also gated by per-module permissions assigned through Team & Roles (giving, funds, pledges, accounting, budgets). A user sees a finance nav item only when they have both the plan tier and the role permission for that module. If a user has the permission but the plan tier does not include the feature, the nav item shows as locked with an upgrade prompt.

Stripe Connect (online giving) setup is reached from Finances > Online Giving Setup, and the same Connect / Disconnect / Stripe Dashboard controls also appear under Church Settings > Integrations. Access follows the giving module gating above rather than a separate permission.

Getting Started

If you are setting up giving for the first time, we recommend this order:

1. Set up your giving funds -- Load the default fund template or create custom funds (see Managing Funds).
2. Connect Stripe -- Enable online giving so members can donate from any device (see Setting Up Online Giving).
3. Record your first donation -- Enter a test donation to see how the flow works (see Recording Donations).
4. Share your giving page -- Send the public giving link to your congregation (see Online Giving Portal).