When your congregation has a payment processor connected, payments arrive by themselves. What the processor cannot tell you is what each one was for: a building fund gift and a dues payment look identical coming in.
So they wait in To file until someone says. The number beside it in the sidebar is how many are waiting.
What the system works out for itself
Before a payment reaches the inbox, it tries to identify the donor by matching the payer’s email address against your records:
- One member matches that address, so the payment is attributed to that member and their household.
- Several members of the same household match, which happens with a shared family address, so it is attributed to the household and no individual is guessed at.
- No match, or a match across different households, so nothing is attributed and you decide.
The matching is deliberately cautious. It only uses exact email matches, and never guesses from a similar name. A wrong link on a real ledger is worse than a blank one, because a blank asks you a question while a wrong link quietly tells you something false.
Filing a payment
Open a waiting payment and say what it was for.
As a donation, choosing a fund. You can create a fund here if the right one does not exist yet, without leaving the inbox.
As a dues payment, choosing the household and the commitment it should count toward. The commitment has to belong to the household you chose.
You can also correct or set the donor while filing, if the automatic match got it wrong or found nothing.
Once filed, the payment leaves the inbox and behaves like any other contribution.
Filing rules
While filing, you can save your choice as a rule. Future payments arriving the same way, through the same payment button, file themselves and never reach the inbox.
This is worth doing for anything recurring. If you have a “Building Fund” button on your website, one rule means every gift through it is categorised automatically from then on.
Rules can be removed later. Removing one leaves everything it already filed exactly as it is, and simply sends future payments back to the inbox.
Do not create a rule for a payment button whose purpose is vague. A general “Donate” button collecting several different things is better filed by hand, so the categories stay honest.
Ignoring duplicates
Sometimes a payment in the inbox is one you already entered by hand. Filing it would double-count the money.
Choose to ignore it. It leaves the inbox and counts toward nothing: not your funds, not your dues, not your totals.
The record itself is kept out of sight rather than deleted, which is what stops it reappearing every time the processor syncs. If you ignore something by mistake, you can restore it and it returns to the inbox to be filed properly.
Ignore is for duplicates and mistakes, not for payments you would rather not deal with. An ignored payment counts nowhere, so a real gift that gets ignored disappears from your totals without any warning.
Keeping the inbox empty
Treat it like an inbox and clear it regularly, weekly is plenty for most congregations.
Payments waiting to be filed are not counted in your dues or fund totals, so a full inbox means your figures are understated. If the year looks short of where you expected, check the inbox before you check anything else. 
