Entering one
From the Donations page, choose to record a contribution. Amount and date received are the basics. The date is when the money arrived, not when you are typing it in. If you are catching up on a fortnight of cheques, set each one’s actual date. Payment method is one of Cash, Cheque, Card, ACH, or Other. Who it came from. Link it to a household, or to an individual member. Linking to a member records the household too, so a gift from Miriam Rosen appears in the Rosen household’s history without you entering it twice. What it was for. This is the important part, and there are two answers.Dues, or a fund
Link it to a dues commitment when the money is dues. This is what moves the household from Unpaid toward Paid, and it is the only kind of link that counts toward dues totals. Link it to a fund when it is a donation: building fund, kiddush fund, tzedakah. See Funds. A contribution can be linked to a household without being linked to either. It is recorded in the ledger, but does not count toward dues or toward a fund. Sometimes that is right, but usually an unlinked payment means a step got missed.Partial payments
Record each payment as it arrives, linked to the same commitment. The status moves to Partial and then to Paid when the total is met. You do not need to combine them or adjust the commitment.Paying across years
Link the payment to the year it is for, which is not always the year it arrived in. A household settling last year’s balance in October should have that payment linked to last year’s commitment. Choose the year on the commitment you link to, not by the date received.Correcting a mistake
Open the contribution and edit it. You can change the amount, the date, the method, who it came from, and what it was for. If a payment was recorded against the wrong household or the wrong year, edit it rather than deleting and re-entering. Editing keeps one clean record. Deleting is available for genuine mistakes, such as an entry made twice. There is no void or refund process, so deleting is the way to remove something that should not be there.Delete only entries that should never have existed. A refunded or bounced payment is a different situation, and it is better recorded as a separate offsetting entry so the history shows what actually happened.