Posting Contribution Batches

Contribution Batches are the fastest way to enter multiple offerings at the same time in Shepherd's Staff, but Contribution Batches themselves are not counted towards your offering totals until they are posted. Posting a Contribution Batch does a few different things. First, in the Contributions module, it attributes the offerings assigned to contributors to them so they appear on that contributor's contribution statement. This also means that the offerings count towards fund totals and will be counted towards totals in reports. Finally, if your offering funds are tied to accounts in the finance module, this will let you create deposits from your offering batches in your Finance module.

It is important at year-end to make sure all offering batches have been posted to ensure that all offerings have been counted for year end reports. To post offering batches, follow the steps below:

1. In the Contributions module, click on Batches in the top menu bar, or, click the first B on the tool bar to open your batch window
2. If you would like Shepherd's Staff to automatically print out a batch posting report when you post your batch, make sure the box for "Print reports during Posting" is checked. This will print a Batch Summary and Batch Detail report when you post your Contribution Batch.
3. If you would like to manually print batch reports, click on the batch you want to print reports for and click "print", and the print menu will appear.
   1. In this menu, you can choose what type of report you want to print for the batch. Detail, where you can see each offering record, Group by Envelope, which shows the total given by each envelope, not sorted by fund, and Summary, which shows totals given to each fund.
   2. If using the "Detail" option, you can choose to sort by Sequence Number or by Envelope Number. Sequence Number is the order that offerings were entered into your batch, where Envelope Number groups the offerings of each person together with their envelope number.
   3. For the Detail or Group by Envelope report, if you want to see the names of the contributors next to the number, you can check the "Show contributor names" box
   4. Click Preview to preview, and then print your selected report
4. Click the Post button to proceed to the final window before batch posting.
5. The next window will ask you to confirm the date you're posting at the top of the window. There will then be two options
   1. "Create an Attendance Batch for all the contributors in this Offering Batch?". This option, if checked, will let you choose an attendance event and create a batch in the Attendance module with everyone in the contribution batch already in it. This can be useful to get your attendance counters started on their attendance batch.
   2. "Create a Deposit in Finance". This option, if checked, will let you pick a date that a deposit will be created in the Finance module that corresponds with the offerings you're posting in the batch. In order to use this option, each fund that is being contributed to must be attached to accounts in the finance module. For more information on attaching funds in Contributions to Accounts in the Finance module, see this article.
6. Click Post, and your contribution batch will be posted. If you had the "Print reports during Posting" box checked in the previous window, both a Contribution Batch Detail and Summary report will print at this time as well.