In order to successfully enter Pledges into Shepherd's Staff and track those pledges accurately, there are a few rules users should keep in mind as they are entering and maintaining pledges:
- No two pledges can be entered for the same contributor (same envelope #) for the same contribution fund with overlapping date ranges. Churches that want to be able to do this should set up multiple Funds that represent one actual Fund (for example, Building Fund A, Building Fund B, Building Fund C). Funds of this nature can all be tied into the same Bank and Offset Accounts for auto-deposit.
- Pledges can be entered at any time, regardless of dates. This means you can enter next year’s pledges before the current pledges are complete. This is important because of the next rule.
- Offerings entered after pledge is entered will be credited towards the “active” entered pledge. Offerings entered before a corresponding pledge is entered will not be automatically credited toward the pledge. In other words, offerings only get applied to a pledge if the pledge is in the database before the offerings.
- Pledges that are entered later than the offerings must be attached to get the offerings connected to the pledge. If you want to attach all unattached offerings to all pledges, see the page entitled Attach offerings to pledges
- When an active pledge changes in any manner, that pledge needs to be ended and a new pledge started. For this, you will want to edit the pledge in question and set the end date to the day before the pledge changed.
- New pledges should be entered each year. Do not create new pledges by editing the existing Pledges and changing dates or amounts. If you find that your contributors are using the same types of pledges every year, consider using Renewable Pledges. See the page entitled Repeat Expired Pledges for more information.