We are a church and i was wondering how do we recieve offerings in quick books. we currently recieve them as payments but they dont show on the a/r reports.

You question prompts me to address a problem that I sometimes see.  I do not know if this is what you mean when you say "receive them as payments", but you don't ever want to Receive A Payment if you have not invoiced a "Customer".  Posting payments alone using the "Receive A Payment" in the customer activities will create a negative balance in your Accounts Receivable account.  This may just be a terminology that use chose to use.  Please comment with specifics.

As a non-profit I am assuming you would like to send year end statements to your givers.  This is easy to do with Quickbooks as long as the information is entered per giver.  Of course, some of your gifts will be in cash wiith no indentification of the giver, and those must simply be recorded in the Deposit window to the appropriate income account.


For those contributions you receive by check or in your church's giving envelopes you need to do three things in Quickbooks.  Set your sales tax preference to "No" (see Setting Sales Tax Preference blog posting), add an Item in your Item List (see Adding an Item to Your Item List) to properly record and code the gift and create a separate customer account (see Adding a Customer...) for each single giver or household.  Once you have set these up your can enter your givers contribution as a Sales Receipt.

Create an "Item" in your Item List for "General Giving", using the Other Charge type.  Enter a default description (this description can be changed within a single transaction without changing the default).  Set the income default to the same account you have been posting the deposits to.  In the sample below, I have used a General Contributions Income account.  If you receive dedicated gifts, such as for a building fund or youth program you should create separate Items and Income Accounts for those contributions, so that they can be tracked on you financial reports in the proper manner.

To create the entry to record a contribution from an individual giver, enter the gift through the Sales Receipt transaction under the Customer tab in the top menu bar.  In the Non-profit version of Quickbooks you can find the "Intuit Standard Donation" sales receipt.  Click on the drop down menu in the upper right corner of the Sales Receipt screen to choose this form.  If you do not have the Non-profit version of QB you can create your own customized Sales Receipt.  This will be addressed in another blog.

Choose the Giver from the drop down list in the Customer:Job field.  Enter the date of the donation.  Quickbooks will automatically assign a sequential Donation No. or you can enter your own.  Enter the payment information including a check number if applicable.

In the Item field choose the General Giving item and press tab.  The default description will be entered into the Description field.  You can leave this as is, change it or add to it without changing the default.

Enter the amount of this particular donation.

If you wish, you can enter a message to your giver.  Use that you have already set-up or create a new one.

Once your sales receipt is complete you can select a send option.  Choose To Be Printed or To Be Emailed at the bottom of the Sales Receipt screen to send at a later time with a group of receipts, or choose Email or Print at the top of the screen to send immediately.

By creating these receipts in Quickbooks you will also be able to generate a Customer Statement at the end of the year to send to your donors for their tax records.  This How-to will be addressed in another blog.

With regards to A/R reports these are generally completed in order to track invoices that are created and then payments that are made at a later date.  By recording the donations as Sales Receipts you can create "Sales" reports to provide information.  For example, you can create the Sales by Customer report to see who made donations in a specific period.  Using the Item feature you can also generate Sales reports by Item.  Create separate items for your various fund raising programs and see who gave for each program.

Please post additional comments if further information or clarification is required.

This material is for informational purposes only and not intended and financial, legal or tax advice. Please consult your finance, legal or tax professional to confirm the accuracy of all information. Quickbooks is a registered product of Intuit.