Recording a Payment

A check arrives in the mail, somebody pays their tuition at the door, a donation comes in over the phone. All of it is entered in one place: open the family, go to the Transactions tab, and click + Payment.

Money received is a payment. Money owed — tuition, a dinner reservation, an invoice — is a bill, and that is Recording a Bill. Either one is added from a family's own Transactions tab; the organization-wide Transactions page is for looking, not entering.

Prefer to watch? Video: Recording a Payment is two minutes, start to finish.

The New Payment window: family and address at the top, then date, amount, method and check number, a note, an Apply this payment to unpaid bills bar, a category line with class and amount, department and card, and an Issue Receipt box with a letter chosen.

A $180 check, categorized, with the receipt letter already picked.

The Fields

Field	What to put in it
Family · Both / Him / Her	Who the payment is credited to. Both is the household; pick a side when the receipt should go to one of them.
Address	Which of the family's addresses this belongs to. It decides where the receipt is posted.
Date	The day of the gift — the check date, not today, if they differ.
Amount	The total received. It fills the first category line for you.
Method, Check #	Cash, Check, Credit Card, Zelle and the rest. The check number is worth entering — it is searchable later.
Category	What the money is for. Type to search; it matches category and subcategory together.

Splitting a Payment

One check covering two things? Fill the first line, then + Add line and set the second category and its amount. The lines have to add up to the payment amount. In lists the payment shows its first category with a +1 badge you can click open.

The Receipt

Issue Receipt marks the payment as receiptable and assigns it a receipt number. Letter chooses which thank-you letter is used when you send it. Sent is a record of whether the thank-you has gone out — it doesn't send anything by itself.

Paying Off Bills

If the family has unpaid bills, the blue Apply this payment to unpaid bills bar appears. Open it to put some or all of the payment against what they owe, so the bill's Due drops instead of the payment sitting separately.

Additional Info

Collapsed at the bottom: Solicitor, Mailing and Honor / Memory. Fill Honor / Memory when the gift is in someone's honor or memory — that is what Notify uses to tell the family it was given.

Changing or Removing One

Every payment row on the Transactions tab has Edit and Delete. After you save, the tab switches to the Payments list and highlights the row so you can see what landed.

Deleting is permanent and takes the detail lines with it. "This will permanently delete the payment and all its detail lines. This cannot be undone." If a payment was entered on the wrong family, move it rather than deleting it — the receipt and invoice numbers survive a move.

Article ID: 4852, Created: Yesterday at 7:00 PM, Modified: Today at 12:02 AM