Recording Donations

This article covers how to manually record cash, check, and other in-person donations, as well as how to view, edit, and manage donation records. Online donations from the public giving page are recorded automatically.

Navigating to Giving

1. From the admin sidebar, open the Finances category and select Giving.
2. The Giving dashboard shows all donations with summary statistics and filtering tools.

Heads up: Giving is a Pro feature. On the Starter or Growth plans, the Giving item in the Finances menu appears locked with an upgrade prompt. Upgrade to Pro to record and manage donations.

Recording a New Donation

1. Click Add giving in the upper-right corner of the Giving page.
2. Fill in the Record Donation form.

Donor Information

If you navigate to the donation form from a person's profile page, that person is automatically pre-selected.

Donation Details

About the Processing Fee field on offline donations

For Stripe-processed online card gifts, TimelyChurch automatically pulls the exact processing fee from Stripe's BalanceTransaction API and records it for you (see Stripe Processing Fees).

For non-Stripe payments -- a PayPal donation, a Cash App tip, a Venmo gift, or a check that triggered a deposit fee -- there is no API call. If you want the fee tracked, enter it manually in the Processing Fee field on the donation. This keeps your donor-facing records at the gross amount (which is what they gave) while still letting you reconcile the net deposit on your bank account.

Campaign and Pledge Linking

Fund Allocations

Every donation must have at least one fund allocation. You can split a single donation across multiple funds.

To split a donation:

1. Enter the first fund and amount.
2. Click Add Another Fund (Split Gift).
3. Enter the second fund and amount.
4. Repeat as needed.

The total of all allocations becomes the donation's total amount.

Public Visibility

1. Click Record Donation. The donation is recorded and assigned a unique Giving ID.

What Happens When You Save a Donation

• A unique Giving ID is generated (format: DON-YYYY-NNNNN, e.g., DON-2026-00001).
• Fund allocations are created.
• Accounting transactions are automatically created in the accounting module (one income entry per fund allocation).
• If the donation is linked to a campaign, the campaign's donation count is updated.
• If the donation is linked to a pledge, the pledge's fulfilled amount is updated.

Viewing a Donation

1. Click any donation row in the giving list to open its detail page.
2. The detail page shows:
   • Donor information (name, email, linked person record)
   • Donation date, amount, payment method, and frequency
   • Status pills (One-time or Recurring, plus a Refunded / Partial Refund badge if the gift has been refunded)
   • Check number and envelope number (if applicable)
   • Fund allocations with amounts
   • Notes
   • Who recorded the donation and when

Editing a Donation

1. Open the donation detail page.
2. Click Edit.
3. Update any fields as needed (donor, date, payment method, allocations, notes).
4. Click Save Changes.

When you update a donation, the corresponding accounting transactions are automatically re-synced to reflect the changes.

Refunding a Donation

For online card gifts processed through Stripe, you can issue a refund directly from TimelyChurch -- you do not need to delete the donation or log into Stripe separately.

1. Open the donation detail page.
2. Click Refund. (This button only appears for Stripe-processed card donations that have not already been refunded. Offline gifts such as cash or check do not have a Refund button.)
3. In the Refund modal, leave the amount blank to refund the full amount the church received, or enter a smaller amount for a partial refund.
4. Optionally choose a reason (Requested by donor, Duplicate charge, or Fraudulent).
5. Click Issue Refund.

When you issue a refund, TimelyChurch processes it through Stripe and automatically updates the related records: the donation is marked as refunded (or partially refunded), the accounting entries are reversed, any linked pledge fulfillment is adjusted, and the gift is excluded from giving statements.

Note on processing fees: The Stripe processing fee is non-refundable -- Stripe keeps it -- so the most you can refund is the net amount the church actually received. The donor bears the fee.

For recurring gifts, the donation detail page also shows a Cancel Recurring button when the gift is tied to an active subscription. Cancelling stops future charges; it does not refund past charges. To refund a specific past charge, use the Refund button instead.

Deleting a Donation

Deleting is intended for correcting a mistaken or duplicate manual entry. For online card gifts that need to be returned to the donor, use Refund (above) instead -- deleting a donation does not return any money to the donor.

1. Open the donation detail page, then open the More Actions menu (three-dot icon) and choose Delete Donation. (You can also use the action menu in the donation list.)
2. Confirm in the dialog.
3. The donation and its allocations are soft-deleted, and the related accounting transactions are removed (except reconciled transactions, which are preserved).

Sending Donation Receipts

Download a Receipt as PDF

1. Open the donation detail page.
2. Click Download Receipt.
3. A PDF receipt is generated and downloaded, named donation-receipt-DON-YYYY-NNNNN.pdf.

Email a Receipt to the Donor

1. Open the donation detail page.
2. Click Email Receipt.
3. Optionally customize the email subject and message.
4. Click Send.

The email includes:

• A personalized greeting using the donor's first name.
• The donation amount and date.
• The PDF receipt as an attachment.

If the donor does not have an email address on file, the email option is unavailable.

Filtering and Searching Donations

The Giving dashboard provides several filtering options:

Dashboard Statistics

The top of the Giving page displays four summary cards for the selected date range:

• Total -- Sum of all donations.
• In-Person -- Cash, check, envelope, and direct deposit donations.
• Online -- Card, online, Cash App, Zelle, Venmo, and PayPal donations.
• Recurring -- Donations marked as recurring.

Additional breakdowns by payment method are available in the statistics.

Exporting Donations

1. From the Giving page, click the More Actions menu (three-dot icon).
2. Select Export reports....
3. Configure your export:

1. Click Export.

Data preservation policy: Financial data exports are limited to the last 2 years. The date range cannot exceed 2 years.

The exported CSV and Excel files include proper UTF-8 encoding for Excel compatibility. Fields are sanitized to prevent formula injection in spreadsheet applications.