Entering Multiple Donations for One Date

For organizations such as Churches that have Sunday collections, where a large percentage of their donors make donations on the same date, you can use File à One Date Donation Entry to bring up a window listing each donor, with a place to enter the Amount, Category, and optionally the Cheque No / Paid By and  Description for the donation that each donor gave that day.

This window can be used both to enter new donations, and to edit existing donations. (This is a change in version 3.05 - previously it could only enter new donations.) All existing donations for the selected date can optionally be displayed, along with spaces to enter new donations for all of the other donors. The only existing donations that are not displayed are ones that have already been included in a charitable receipt, because they can't be edited anyways.

Specifying Options

When you bring up this window, the first thing that appears is a small dialog titled "One Date Donation Entry Options". The main thing that you must always set on this window is the date for entry of donations. All donations entered with this window will go in for the same one date that is specified here. If you do not change the date, you will be prompted to confirm that this is indeed your desired donation date. (This helps to prevent errors.)

You can also change the default donation category for the donations to be entered, via this Options window, overriding the default set on the Maintenance à Main Window Options window. If you have multiple offerings or collections to enter which are for different services or campaigns, and which are each mostly for one category (but different categories between the two services or campaigns), just use One Date Donation Entry twice, setting the desired donation category on the Options window each time. Please note that changes made here are not remembered between uses of the window - it always starts up showing the default set in Maintenance à Main Window Options.

On this same window, you can also specify whether or not you want to see the Cheque # / Paid By and Donation fields on this window. Changes you make to those selections are remembered between uses of this window.

In addition, there is a check box for "Include existing donations for the specified date". If this is checked (the default), any existing donations for the given date are displayed, so that you can edit them, and there are also blank rows for all other donors that did not have donations on that date. If this is unchecked, there is just one blank row for each donor (which is how the program always worked prior to version 3.05). Changes you make to this selection are also remembered between uses of this window.

Once the date that is displayed is the desired date and you have changed the donation category if desired, if you want to see all donors displayed (which will be by far the most common choice), just click OK or press Enter on the Options window. Details of what else you can do with this window are described below.

Sorting the Rows

Next, decide which order you want to see the donors listed in. The default order is by Donor Name. If you prefer to see them sorted by Member/Envelope Number, click the "Member/Env #" radio button. This sort order is remembered between your uses of this window.

Data Entry

Then, just go down the list of donors, entering the donation Amount, Category (when it differs from the default one) and optionally Cheque No / Paid By and Description fields for each donor that made a donation on this date. You will notice that there is only one line for each donor. If a donor made a donation that has to be split between two or more Categories, then after you finish entering the first donation, click the Split Donor button (or press Alt-D) and it will insert another empty line for that donor. Fill that in, and if necessary repeat these steps to put in further splits for this donation.

Please note that unlike entering donations on the main window, you cannot enter donations of $0 on this window. My assumption is that entering $0 donations will only be done in exceptional circumstances, and as such does not need to be allowed on this window, which is for speeding up routine data entry.

Finding Donors

If you have many more donors in your list than you have donations to enter on this date, finding the donors may require a certain amount of scrolling. You can avoid that by using the Find Donor button (or Alt-F) to find a donor by either part of its name or its member/envelope number. (This is basically the same function as File à Find Donor on the main window.)

Checking and Saving your Work

If you are working from input sheets that have subtotaled the day's entries by donation category, and want to make sure that you have entered everything properly before saving, you can click the Totals by Category button at the bottom of the window, beside the overall total. That will tell you how many donors you have made donations for, how many individual donations that includes, the dollar total, and a breakdown of numbers of donations and dollar amounts by donation category.

When you are done, click the Save button to save all of the donations that you entered back to the database. It will tell you how many entries you made and their total, and ask you to confirm that you want to save them.

If you decide you did not want to be in this window, and do not want to save any entries that you may have made, click the Cancel button and no changes will be made to the database.

If you want to further double-check the total donations you made on one day (with the same entry Date), you can use Reports à Donation à One Date Details and/or Reports à Donation à One Date Summary.

If you use member or envelope numbers, you can also use Reports à Donation à One Date Details with Member/Envelope # for checking your entries. This report has a “Member / Envelope # Checksum” at the bottom. This value is just the sum of all distinct envelope numbers that appear in the report. This can be used as a double-check that you entered the donations for the correct donors, if you add the envelope numbers up with a calculator before doing your entries. If your calculator total differs from the Member / Envelope # Checksum displayed, either you added them up incorrectly on the calculator, or you entered one or more donations for the wrong donor.

If you find any errors, you can either fix them individually on the main window, or go back in to One Date Donation Entry again to fix them, being sure to check the "Include existing donations for the specified date" checkbox.

Adding Donors

If you are entering your donations and realize that you need to add a donor, just Save your work so far, add the donor on the main window, then come back in to this window again (for the same date). Be sure to check the "Include existing donations for the specified date" checkbox. All of the donations you have entered so far will be displayed, and you will be able to continue from the new donor. Your totals at the end, when you Save again, will include the previous donations you Saved for this date.

There is actually an Add Donor button on this window, but all it does is inform you of what is in the previous paragraph.

Selecting Criteria for Donors

If you wish, you can use the "One Date Donation Entry Options" window that comes up when you first select File à One Date Donation Entry to restrict the donors that it shows to you. You can restrict them based on the value in the Donor Category 1 or Donor Category 2 fields, or you can restrict them to only those who have already donated in the current year.

If you wish to restrict them to donors in a certain donor category, just pull down the appropriate drop-down list for that category, and select the desired value from it. An example of when you might want to do this would be if you have given a certain category value to those of your donors who are interested in a certain project, and the collection you are entering is entirely for that project.

To select only those who have already donated in the current year, select the checkbox titled "Only show donors who have donated this year". Checking this would be helpful if you had a lot of regular donors, and quite a few others in your list of donors who currently aren't donating, to avoid having to see those others.

When you have made the desired selections, click OK, and it will restrict the list according to your specifications. If you don't want a restricted list, just don't select any criteria.