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If you are moving from another system, or from a spreadsheet your treasurer has kept for years, you can bring the giving history across rather than retyping it. Find the import in the Finances section.

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Do these first

Import in this order, because contributions link to things that need to already exist:
1

Members and households

Contributions link to the household or member who gave. See Importing members and households.
2

Funds

Create the funds your historical donations were given to, so the import can match them. See Funds.
3

Dues settings and commitments

If you are importing dues payments and want them to count toward commitments, the commitments need to exist first.
4

Then contributions

Now the links can be made.

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What your file should have

  • Date received. The date the money actually arrived, not the date you are importing.
  • Amount.
  • Who gave it. A name or an email address that can be matched to your records.
  • What it was for. A fund name, or an indication that it was dues.
  • Payment method, if you have it.
CSV and Excel files both work. The import reads your columns and works out what they mean, then shows you the mapping to confirm before anything is saved.

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Matching

Donors are matched against your existing records. Funds are matched by name, so consistent fund names in your spreadsheet make a real difference. “Bldg Fund” in one row and “Building Fund” in another creates work.
Before importing, sort your spreadsheet by the fund column and read down it. Inconsistent names stand out immediately, and fixing them in the spreadsheet takes a fraction of the time it takes afterwards.

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Review before committing

You see what will be created, including which rows could not be matched to a donor or a fund. Anything unmatched is worth resolving before you commit rather than after, since correcting it later means finding those rows again in the ledger. The report afterwards tells you what actually happened, including rows that failed.

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Historical dues

Importing dues payments so they count toward past commitments needs those commitments to exist. If you are reconstructing several years of history, that is real work. An approach that saves time: import the payments for full historical accuracy, and only reconstruct commitments for the years anyone will actually ask about. Most congregations care about the current year and the one before, not eight years back.
Import into a quiet moment and check the result before moving on. Financial records are the ones people notice, and a bad import is more work to unpick than to get right the first time.

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After importing

  • Check the totals against whatever you had before. They should match.
  • Look at the Dues page for the years you imported and confirm the households you expect show as paid.
  • Spot-check a few individual households against your old records.