Church Donation Records

Copyright Bill Couture, 2009

Release 9.0

This program will be available for beta testing in the very near future.  If you are interested in becoming a beta tester please email me at SBTBILL@AOL.COM

Beta testers will receive a free copy of the final version for their own use.

This program is designed to simplify the record keeping of small and medium sized churches. It may also be used by larger churches but will require some manual processing in that case. The original version was written in GWBASIC in 1987. Since then the program has goon through many changes.

Features of the program are:

1) Complete biographical data on each donor.
2) A week by week breakdown of donations.
3) An ability to display donations by type, month and year.
4) Ability to display donations by location.
5) Print mailing labels using a standard Avery format.
6) Print a donor phone book.
7) Print annual donation statements.

Adding Donors

To use the program you will need to add a list of donors. The demo version will allow you to add up to 25 donors. The regular version will handle thousands without problems.
Note that larger then normal fonts are used for ease of reading. This first screen lets you search for edit and Add donors. Donors who are inactive may also be deleted.
 

The find feature lets you type in a name to check if it is there.

The edit screen itself looks as above. It is designed to give a full summary of the donors information. The street address is broken off from the street name to allow reporting by street so that it is easier to arrange home visits. Like wise a standard map page notation is enter able. Group allows ordering donors by just that. Three lines of comments are available for each donor.

The first thing that must be don with any program is to set up the defaults. With Church Donation Records the Donation types are the first thing to set up. This is done via the via the Utilities, File Maintenance menu items.



This screen lets you add, edit and delete donation types. It also gives a quick look at how much has come in for each donation type over the various tracked periods. Pressing Add clears the top and lets you add another donation type. Edit allows changes to the long description only. The income amounts can only be edited when adding. Pressing delete will bring up a yes/no confirmation screen that protects from accidental data deletion.

Next under Utilities, File Maintenance is Organization Data. This is where you enter the data that will display on statements regarding the Church.



Note that the church leaders title is editable.
 

From time to time a donation type will be miss entered.

Here an obvious misspelling is corrected with the merge type utility.

This utility is found under utilities, File Maintance, Mass Edit a donation type.



Set Data Locations is also found on the Utilities menu. It is under the title enter data locations. This allows you to choose where the data will be stored. It even allows the storage of more then one set of data.

The day to day entry of donations starts on the input menu.

The first step is to enter the date and donation type. The donation type may be chosen from a pick list or typed in directly.

If chosen from the pick list it looks as follows:



Highlighting the selected default donation type chooses that as the primary donation type for this session. Note that types can be added on the fly for ease of use.


Above is the main donation entry screen. At the very top is the current donor selected. The list is always in alphabetic order. To select the correct donor to enter data for press the find button. This takes you to the Last box. Type in the last name of the person you are looking for.
In many cases there will be more then one person with that last name. You can use the mouse and right hand scroll bar to get to the correct entry.

Next enter the amount of the donation for this individual. Press the save button. In many cases an individual may make more then one donation type. After you press save the donor stays the current donor so you may go back in and add another item for this individual with ease.

Once you are done with this individual type in the name of the next one. Case by the way is unimportant.