Donations

Overview

Donations is the broadest finance workflow in Holy Resource. It covers manual donation entry, recurring giving schedules, donation categories, receipt templates, tax-oriented settings, payment channel setup, and the public donor-facing giving experience used for online and text-to-give flows.

This is not only a ledger page. It is the center of the church's giving operations. A staff member may use it to record an in-person cash gift, a finance admin may use it to configure receipt templates, and a donor may touch the same system indirectly through the public giving website and provider-hosted payment pages.

For non-technical users, the easiest way to think about Donations is: configure the giving system once, record or receive gifts through the right channels, then manage receipts, categories, recurring schedules, and reports from one place.

What Lives Inside The Donations Module

The Donations module is really a collection of connected finance surfaces:

• The main donations list page
• The create, edit, and view donation dialogs
• Recurring donation schedule management
• Donation category management
• Donation settings and receipt templates
• Fiscal-year and tax-oriented settings
• Online giving, text-to-give, card reader, and bank account configuration
• Public giving pages on the docs website
• Donation reporting pages

That is why this documentation is intentionally saturated. If your church uses digital giving seriously, Donations touches more than one screen.

Main Donations Page

The main Donations page is the daily operating screen for giving records. It is where finance staff can search, filter, review, and take action on recorded donations.

Typical page responsibilities include:

• Displaying all branch donation records
• Searching by donor, category, method, or receipt reference
• Filtering by date range, method, status, and donor type
• Opening create, edit, or view flows
• Reviewing branch-level giving trends through summary cards

The page works best for day-to-day record management rather than template editing or gateway setup. Those supporting workflows live on connected pages described later in this guide.

What Staff Usually Do Here

• Search for a donor or gift record
• Verify the payment status on a donation
• Open the receipt-ready detail view
• Correct a category, method, or note on an existing donation
• Record a cash, cheque, bank transfer, or other manual gift

Recording A Donation Manually

The create donation flow supports the situations where a gift already happened and staff need to record it properly in the system.

The entry form supports multiple donor and payment contexts instead of assuming every gift comes from the same kind of donor.

Donor modes

• Member
• Visitor
• Anonymous

Common core fields

• Donor name
• Donor email and phone when known
• Amount
• Currency
• Donation category or type
• Payment method
• Payment status
• Date
• Notes
• Tax-deductible flag
• Transaction reference when applicable

Manual entry also supports payment methods such as:

• Cash
• Card
• Bank transfer
• QR code
• Cheque
• Online

This broad method list matters because churches often receive gifts from several channels and still need a normalized internal record.

When To Use Manual Entry

Use manual entry when:

• A cash gift was counted on site
• A cheque was received and needs to be stored as a record
• A bank transfer happened outside the automated intake path
• Historical donations are being entered during data migration or cleanup

Do not use manual entry as a workaround for online giving that should have been attributed by webhook. If the provider flow is healthy, those gifts should arrive automatically.

Viewing And Editing Donation Records

Each donation can be opened in a detail view so staff can inspect the full record without editing immediately. This is useful when the user mainly wants to confirm the donor details, method, category, receipt number, or notes.

The edit flow then allows corrections such as:

• Updating category assignment
• Correcting the donor name or donor type
• Adjusting the payment status
• Adding a transaction reference
• Revising notes or receipt-related details

Because giving records feed receipts, reports, and goals, accurate edits matter beyond the single row being changed.

Recurring Donations

Recurring giving is handled as a schedule workflow rather than a simple checkbox that staff forget about later. Holy Resource keeps a dedicated recurring donation list so teams can manage ongoing giving intentionally.

Recurring schedule management includes:

• Viewing active and paused schedules
• Seeing next payment dates
• Processing due recurring payments
• Pausing and resuming schedules
• Deleting schedules when appropriate

This separation matters because a recurring schedule is not the same thing as a single donation row. The schedule defines future behavior, while each processed payment becomes its own donation record.

Why Recurring Schedules Need Their Own Page

• A church may want to pause a schedule without deleting past donations.
• Staff may need to inspect which recurring payments are due next.
• A schedule can continue across many donation records.
• Payment processing and schedule state are different concerns.

Donation Categories

Categories are one of the most important configuration layers in Donations. They affect reporting, goal tracking, receipt clarity, and general finance organization.

Category management supports:

• Creating categories
• Editing names and descriptions
• Setting colors for visual differentiation
• Managing active state
• Reordering categories
• Marking tax-deductibility behavior

The category list is not only cosmetic. Clear category structure improves:

• Goal linkage
• Donation summaries
• Public finance communication
• Staff accuracy during entry

Category Practices That Improve Data Quality

• Use one category per real giving purpose.
• Avoid near-duplicate categories for the same campaign.
• Keep old categories inactive when retired instead of renaming them into something unrelated.
• Make category names understandable to both finance staff and church leadership.

Donation Settings

The donation settings area controls the behavioral defaults behind the module, not just cosmetic preferences.

Typical settings include:

• Whether anonymous donations are allowed
• Whether recurring donations are enabled
• Whether tax receipts are enabled
• Minimum donation amount
• Auto-send receipt behavior
• Tax year end date

The tax year end value matters because other finance features can rely on the same fiscal-year boundary rather than assuming a normal calendar year.

Receipt Templates And Fiscal Setup

Holy Resource supports receipt template management so churches can standardize donor communications instead of sending bare system messages.

Template management supports:

• Creating templates for email and PDF use
• Editing the body and structure of templates
• Marking a default template
• Previewing the result
• Deleting templates that are no longer needed

The finance team can also manage fiscal years and tax-oriented settings so reporting and receipt workflows align with the church's operational calendar.

Why Template Management Matters

• Donor acknowledgements should look intentional.
• Tax and receipt language needs consistency.
• Different churches may want different phrasing, branding, or layout.
• A default template keeps receipts predictable for staff.

Payment Channel Setup In General Settings

Some of the most important Donations workflows live under the general settings area because payment infrastructure is shared operational configuration.

That Online Giving section includes three related surfaces:

• Card Readers for in-person payment hardware
• Online Giving for donor-facing gateway links and text-to-give
• Bank Accounts for direct transfer instructions and QR-backed transfer details

Online giving gateways

Online gateways can define:

• Gateway name
• Provider type such as Stripe, PayPal, Flutterwave, or custom
• Public giving URL
• Text-to-give number
• Text keyword or campaign ID
• Active and default state

The app treats text-to-give the way most real church systems do: the donor texts a short keyword or campaign ID, the provider responds with or confirms a secure mobile giving flow, and the completed donation syncs back later.

Card readers

Card reader setup supports in-person donation workflows where staff use approved reader hardware instead of a generic manual card note.

Bank accounts

Bank account configuration stores the branch account information used for direct transfer giving, including transfer-friendly details and QR presentation where supported.

Public Giving Website Pages

Donations is also connected to pages on the documentation website that function as donor-facing giving surfaces.

Public giving page

The public giving page resolves a secure token and then displays the giving options allowed for that branch and gateway. It can show:

• A provider-hosted web giving button
• Text-to-give instructions
• Fallback error or not-configured messaging if the token or environment is not ready

The public giving page exists so staff do not need to expose raw internal branch data directly to donors.

Checkout pages

The docs website also contains checkout-oriented pages used for payment completion and success flows where the provider integration requires it.

These website surfaces are part of the Donations ecosystem even though they live outside the main authenticated app.

Reports And Summaries

Holy Resource includes donation reporting pages so leaders can move from record management into interpretation.

Donation reporting commonly answers questions like:

• How much was given in this period?
• Which categories are growing or shrinking?
• Which payment methods are being used most?
• How does this month compare with earlier periods?
• What are the largest gifts or average gift levels?

The donation summaries report uses filters and grouped visualizations rather than leaving the team with a raw export alone.

How Donations Connects To Goals

Donations and Goals are tightly connected. A donation can feed a financial goal automatically when its category matches a linked goal configuration.

That means category quality affects more than reporting. It also affects whether goal progress is trustworthy.

Examples:

• A Building Fund donation can move a building goal forward.
• A Missions donation can feed a missions goal.
• A miscategorized donation can distort both reports and goal progress.

Advanced Rules Behind The Scenes

Some donation behaviors are not obvious from the page alone.

• Donation records are branch-scoped.
• Sensitive donor information can be encrypted at rest.
• Receipt numbers are system-generated for consistency.
• Recurring schedules are separate from individual processed donations.
• Gateway readiness checks can warn when online giving is not actually production-ready.
• Public giving links rely on sync-server token workflows, not a raw open branch link.
• Online and text-to-give donations are designed to flow in through sync and webhook handling.
• Template defaults are controlled so staff have a predictable receipt baseline.

What Churches Usually Need To Document Internally

• Which categories should staff use for each giving purpose
• Which donations should be entered manually versus expected from sync
• Who owns receipt template edits
• Who is allowed to configure payment gateways
• How the church wants recurring giving reviewed each month

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