Record a check or cash gift

Gifts you record by hand are free (no platform fee) and are treated like any other gift: the donor gets a tax receipt, the gift appears in reports and year-end statements, and it can be deposited to QuickBooks in a batch.

Needs a role that can record gifts: Staff, Finance, Admin or Owner.

Steps

1. Open Gifts and click Record a gift.
2. Donor: start typing a name or email. Pick an existing donor, or create a new one on the spot.
3. Amount and Date (the date you received it; it can't be in the future).
4. Method: check, cash, card, bank transfer, in-kind, or other. "Card" and "bank transfer" here are for historical records you processed elsewhere.
5. Fund (defaults to your default fund), and optional campaign and appeal.
6. Optional details: check number, an in-honor/in-memory tribute, internal notes.
7. Receipt: on by default. Untick Send a receipt if the donor already got one elsewhere or doesn't want email.
8. Click Record gift.

In-kind gifts

Choose In-kind and describe what was given ("12 cases of canned goods"). In-kind gifts appear on receipts and year-end statements by description only: the IRS asks the donor, not the charity, to value them, so no dollar amount is printed as deductible.

Soft credits

If someone influenced the gift without paying it (a board member who asked a friend, a donor-advised fund's adviser), add a soft credit on the gift. Soft credits show up in the donor's giving history and reports but never on receipts, and they don't double-count totals.

Fixing mistakes

Open the gift and click Edit. For gifts recorded by hand you can change anything, including the amount and date. For online gifts paid through Stripe you can change labels (fund, campaign, appeal, notes) but not the amount or date; use a refund instead.

Depositing to the bank

Checks and cash you've recorded can be grouped into a deposit batch under Bank deposits, which is what syncs to QuickBooks. See Bank deposits for checks and cash.