Streamlining Non-Deductible Payments with OnlineGiving.org's Payments Feature
Managing church finances can be complicated, especially when it comes to non-deductible payments like event registrations or shopping cart purchases. OnlineGiving.org's Payments feature simplifies these processes, providing church administrators with an efficient tool to track and manage payments outside of donations.
What Is the Payments Feature?
The Payments feature is specifically designed for non-deductible payments, such as those for church events, fundraisers, or a church store. It's important to note that this tool is not for handling tax-deductible donations — for that, you’d want to refer to the Donations User Guide on OnlineGiving.org. But if you're dealing with payments outside of donations, this tool provides a robust way to track transactions in one central place.
Key Features and Flexibility
One of the biggest strengths of the Payments feature is its flexibility. It supports a wide range of payment processes, from custom forms and church management software integrations to simple shopping cart checkouts. This flexibility allows churches to manage both one-time and recurring payments efficiently, ensuring all transactions are tracked and managed from various sources in one unified dashboard.
The Payments Dashboard
In the Payments dashboard, you'll find a clear breakdown of all transactions categorized by status: Approved, Declined, Refunded, and more. This offers a quick and easy snapshot of the state of payments coming through your church’s system.
A particularly useful feature is the geographic heat map, which visually represents where payments are coming from, providing insights into your user base’s location.
Tracking Trends with the Timeline Feature
The Payments feature also offers a timeline chart that helps track payment patterns over time. This is invaluable for understanding seasonal trends or preparing for future events. Additionally, it offers projections for upcoming transactions based on historical data — helping churches plan for future financial needs with greater accuracy.
Diving Into the Details
For administrators who need to dig deeper, the Payments Detail Screen provides all the necessary information for a particular transaction. From customer details to payment gateway information, this screen gives you full visibility. You can also resend order status emails, update payment statuses, or even process refunds directly from this page. Refunding payments is straightforward: search for the payment, click Refund, and you’re done.
Time-Saving Search Functionality
A standout feature is the powerful search functionality. You can filter transactions by date range, transaction ID, name, or payment status, making it easy to find specific transactions or analyze trends. This level of control eliminates the need to manually sift through records, making financial management far more efficient.
OnlineGiving.org's Payments feature is all about efficiency. It simplifies the management of non-deductible payments, provides a clear transaction overview, and streamlines tasks like refunds or sending order confirmations. For churches handling any type of payments outside of donations, this feature could prove to be a real game-changer.
In this article, we'll overview the OnlineGiving.org Payments feature.
Payments Overview
We are excited to introduce the Payments feature, a powerful tool that can help church administrators handle and review transactions efficiently. This user-friendly feature allows you to manage and keep track of non-tax-deductible payments, such as general payments, event registration payments, or shopping cart checkout payments.
We want to clarify that donations are not considered as payments as they are tax-deductible. If you need assistance with managing donations, please refer to our Donations User Guide for more information.
We understand that different organizations have different payment processing needs. That's why OnlineGiving.org offers many options for collecting and processing one-time and recurring payments. You can process payments through custom forms, external ChMS event registration integrations, external ChMS payment integrations, and shopping cart checkouts.
You can use the Payments Checkouts feature in the control panel if you're specifically looking for payments associated with completed shopping cart checkouts. This feature includes order fulfillment and other relevant information.
The Payments feature in the control panel is designed to be a centralized location for managing and visualizing all transactional information related to payments. We believe that this feature can help you streamline your payment management process and make it more efficient.
User Guide Sections
Anatomy of Payments
The payments feature is designed to help you easily manage transactional payments completed with the OnlineGiving.org platform.
When you access the payments feature in the control panel, you'll see grand totals grouped for the payments based on approval status, such as "Approved," "Declined," and "Refunded."
Beneath the snapshot grand totals, you'll find a heat map that displays payment activity based on the browsing network location of the user's checkout. This map allows you to quickly understand your user base's geographic locations.
Below the heat map, you'll find an interactive timeline chart that plots the payments based on the payment date. More data becomes available as you continue to use OnlineGiving.org's payment features. After more than one year, previous years (up to two) are included on the timeline for comparison purposes. The timeline will also project future checkouts based on multiple years of data.
Finally, under the interactive map and timeline is the main payments table. This table includes sorting payments by clicking on the table column headers. You can also change the payment date range or narrow down payments by transaction ID, amount, name, fund, sub-fund, frequency, and payment status. This makes it easy for you to manage your payments and make informed decisions.
To view the details of a payment, simply click on the row of the payment in the payments table. This will display the payment transaction information window, which contains a wealth of information about the transaction.
The payment information window is divided into various sections, such as customer information, payment details, covered fee, funds/sub-fund, ChMS external records, webhook notification status, transactional gateway information, and more.
If you need to resend the order status email for a payment, click the "Resend Email" button at the top right corner. The payment status can also be edited to indicate a refund or canceled order. You may refund the checkout order directly or print the checkout information.
If the payment is associated with a completed checkout. The payment detail window will be the same as the checkout detail window containing the detailed order information.
- Approved - The transaction was approved by the payment gateway.
- Refunded - The checkout payment has been refunded.
- Cancelled - The transaction was canceled or has been canceled by the bank.
- Bank Rejected - The transaction was bank rejected.
General Payments Directions & FAQs
How to Access Checkouts in the Control Panel
- Log in to the control panel
- Under the "Payments" section in the left navigation menu, click "Payments"
- Log in to the control panel
- Under the "Payments" section in the left navigation menu, click "Payments"
- By default approved payments for the year are displayed.
- To search, enter the search information into the search inputs and press the enter key.
- To narrow by date, select the date ranges as needed.
- Log in to the control panel
- Under the "Payments" section in the left navigation menu, click "Payments"
- Search and locate the desired payment for management
- Click on the checkout row in the checkouts search results table
- Click the "Refund" button on the top right, confirm the refund when prompted