Servant Keeper Blog

How Servant Keeper Helps you Enter Contributions Faster (Video)

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How long does it take for your ministry to enter contributions?

With the features and tools built into Servant Keeper, you can do it faster.

Save Time Linking Members and Donors to Their Contributions

Servant Keeper gives you two options for tying a contribution to a member record in your database.

Enter by name: You can start by entering the donor’s name. Or save even more time by entering just their initials or a portion of their name, and their name will auto-fill in the entry field. And the contribution will be automatically linked to their member record.

Enter by envelope number: Does your ministry use envelopes? Simply enter members’ envelope numbers in Servant Keeper to link this contribution to their record. And Servant Keeper will verify the donor after the envelope number is entered. Plus you have the option to turn off the verification if you don’t want the people doing the entry to know the donor tied to that number.

Enter Multiple Types of Contributions in Seconds

Your ministry likely receives donations besides just cash or check. Now you can track everything from a check designated for multiple different funds, to an online gift, to a couch for your youth room! Here’s some other examples of contributions you can track:

Cash – From an envelope, or loose in the plate.
Check
Non-cash – Any gifts in kind.
Direct deposit
Split contributions – A contribution from one person, designated to multiple funds.
Online giving – A way for people to give from anywhere at any time.
Credit or debit
Gifts by text

Entering checks: If you enter a check number, Servant Keeper will automatically switch the type to check. As you go through the process of entering numerous contributions, you’ll appreciate the elimination of this step.

Easily Designate Funds

It’s likely that your contributions won’t all go to one fund. Some will go to your general fund, but others will be for missions, a building fund, or for a special project or ministry.

With Servant Keeper, you can easily designate contributions to any number of funds. Even split one person’s contribution between multiple funds.

View and Edit Contributions at any Time While Entering a Batch

Enter contributions with confidence. With Servant Keeper, you can view and edit entries in your current batch at any time. If you get to the end of entering contributions and suddenly notice you entered the wrong envelope number, or you find some additional loose change, you can adjust accordingly.

That’s all you need to be started tracking your contributions all year long. Then, use the information you’ve tracked to send out contribution statements in minutes! Click below to see how simple and fast it is to create and send statements by paper, email, and member self-service.

See How Easy it is to do Contribution Statements

Split Contributions

It’s very easy to do split contributions in Servant Keeper, when the donor wishes to submit one check, but split the contribution across multiple funds.

Enter the donor and the check number. Then enter the dollar amount of the first split of the contribution, and select the fund.

Then, instead of hitting enter to save the contribution, simply enter the amount of the next split portion and choose the fund.

You can split a contribution into as many funds as are needed. If this donor happens to give the same split contribution on a regular basis, you can save this as their memorized contribution. That way the next time you enter the contribution for that donor, you can simply check the “Use memorized transactions” box, and it will automatically fill in their contribution for you.

Gifts In Kind

Servant Keeper makes it easy to track non-cash gifts.

Simply select “Other/Non-Cash,” and enter the donor.

Enter a dollar amount or leave it as zero, whichever is appropriate.

You can also add a note to the non-cash gift, describing the donation.

Finally, you can choose to display it on your statements.

Cash Donations

One of the most time consuming parts of entering contributions can be counting up and entering cash donations.

Servant Keeper makes it easy to enter cash donations collected in offering plates, offering boxes, Sunday School donations, or as love offerings at events.

Simply click loose plate offering. And the donation will be assigned to the loose plate category.

You can use the built in cash calculator to speed up the entry process even more. This allows you to enter the number of coins and bills, and totals the amount for you.

Loose plate offering can also be attributed to a specific fund, such as your building fund, or a mission trip fund.

The currency totals will then be available on your deposit report that you may wish to include in your bank deposit bag.

Visitor Contributions

Have you considered the steps your finance team will need to take when adding a contribution from visitor not yet in your system?

Servant Keeper makes it easy, and seamless.

Enter the name of the visitor, and Servant Keeper will either prompt you to either search the database for similar names, or add the visitor on the fly to your database.

You may even have the visitor’s information on the check, or a visitor card they dropped in your collection plate.

The beauty of this process is that you do not have to stop contributions and go to some other part of the program to add the visitor. You can just do it right on the fly. After this is done, the visitor is now part of your database, and it will be easier to do visitor follow-up, email them a donor receipt, and more.

Post a Batch in Seconds

Once you are done entering contributions for a specific batch or service, you can simply click “Post Batch” to post those contributions to a specific date.

Simply click “Edit Batch Information.” Then, you have additional details you can add to make tracking your contributions easier and more accurate.

You can backdate the batch to whatever day those contributions came in. This is helpful if contributions are not immediately entered after the service.
You can add multiple batches per day allowing you to have a separate batch for each service (if you have multiple services in one day).
You can also select a service to the batch to, and attend all contributors to that service when the batch is posted.
You can put a comment along with the batch. This is helpful for keeping information on anything that may have impacted giving that day (for example, you could note that bad weather hurt your attendance).

After you’re done adding information, click “Post and Finalize Batches.”

At this point, if you use Quickbooks for accounting, you can use the built in integration to automatically send your batch to your accounting program. (Servant Keeper integrates with most other top accounting programs).

Batch Reports

Before you post a batch, you can run some helpful reports for that batch.

By simply clicking, “Print Batch Reports,” you’ll have access to the following reports and more:

Proof List – This shows the contributions you have entered for the batch so its easy to double check your work.
Account Totals Report – With one click of a button, you can email this report to anyone who needs to see a report of the total given to each fund, but does not want to see the donors’ names. This could be to your board, your elders, or even your pastor.
Bank Deposit Report- This report is a valuable, time-saving tool. It will list all the checks, and their corresponding amounts, and even the currency breakdown for that deposit.

The best part is, in Servant Keeper, you can easily customize all of these reports to suit your specific needs. Or even build your own reports.