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User's Manual

Note: This manual is a little out-of-date, but should give a good overview of Grace. An updated manual is planned for an upcoming release.

 

Contents

I. The Basics
  1. Definitions
  2. Starting a deposit
  3. Entering contributions
  4. Sealing a deposit
II. Other Features
  1. Opening a deposit
  2. Copying a deposit
  3. Fixing sealed deposits
  4. Searching
  5. Reports
  6. Checkreader
III. Administration
  1. Managing Funds
  2. Viewing Logs

 

I. The Basics

 

1. Definitions

To begin using Grace, you need to understand a few important terms as they are defined in the system:

Deposit - a set of contributions entered on a particular date, and processed as a group. Processing usually involves generating reports, sending notification to fund owners, printing receipts, and taking the deposit to the bank. A deposit is said to be sealed when the user has completed entering the contributions and is ready to process it.

Contribution - A single monetary transfer from a donor to one or more funds. A contribution corresponds to one kind of money (e.g., a check, a sum of cash, etc.). Each contribution is composed of one or more line items, where each line item describes how much money is to go to a given fund.

Example Contribution:
Total: $100
Type: Check


 Amount Fund
Line Item #1 $50 Joe Staff
Line Item #2 $50 Sue Staff

Donor - a single money-giving entity. Examples would be:

  • An individual (e.g., "Joe Smith")
  • A couple (e.g., "Joe and Sue Smith")
  • A family (e.g., "The Smiths")
  • A company (e.g., "Smith's Grocery, Inc.")
  • A church/organization (e.g., "First Presbyterian Church")

Fund - a single money-receiving entity. Examples would be:

  • A fund for an individual (e.g., "Joe Staff")
  • A fund for a couple or family (e.g., "Joe and Sue Staff")
  • An organization-wide fund (e.g., "Conferences")
Each fund has one or more owners that can receive email notification when contributions are received.

 

2. Starting a deposit

Starting a new deposit is simple:

  1. Go to Deposit => New...
  2. Modify the default data or just leave it as it is.
  3. Select OK to create the new deposit.
You should now see your new empty deposit, ready to have contributions entered.

 

3. Entering contributions

To add a new contribution:

  1. Select "Add..." in the main window
  2. Lookup the donor for the contribution
    1. Begin typing the donor's "sort name". A sort name is a unique string that helps with rapid lookup. For people, this will be their last name. For churches, organizations, and businesses, this will be the first word in their name.
    2. When you hit "enter" the system will retrieve the matches.
    3. Continue typing until the desired donor is selected, or hit "Tab" twice to go to the list and use the arrow keys to select the correct one.
    4. If the desired donor is not found, either select "Advanced Search..." to search more rigorously, or select "Add New Donor...". When adding a new donor, the system will search for duplicates, so this is the recommended approach if one is uncertain about whether the donor already exists in the system.
    5. While the donor is selected, hit "enter" to view that donor's previous contributions. If the donor has never given, the "New Contribution" button will be highlighted.
    6. Select either "Use Previous" to base the current contribution on an old one, or "New Contribution" to start a new contribution for the donor.
  3. Select the type of the contribution (check, cash, money order, EFT (Electronic Fund Transfer)).
  4. If desired, enter additional data depending on which type of contribution is being entered by selecting "Set Type Data...". For example, use this to enter a check number.
  5. Add line items to the deposit by selecting "Add...".
    1. Select which fund this line item is for by typing the first letter of the fund's name in the fund drop-down box. If the desired fund is not yet selected, use the arrow keys to find it.
    2. Enter the amount for this line item.
    3. If desired, select whether the line item should be anonymous using the "Anonymous?" check box. When this is selected, the fund owner will see that an anonymous person gave to him, and the donor's name will be hidden.
    4. If desired, you can designate this line item to not generate a receipt.  Note that if other line items exist that *should* have a receipt printed, this field is ignored.
  6. If desired, add a note for this contribution by selecting "Change Note...".
  7. Select OK to create the contribution.

 

4. Sealing a deposit

Sealing a deposit allows the deposit to be processed. Once a deposit is sealed, it cannot be unsealed, and no contributions in the deposit can be altered. (However, they can be fixed, which is explained later).

To seal a deposit:

  1. Go to Deposit => Seal...
  2. Select which of the following processing tasks are to be executed in sealing this deposit:
    1. Send Email Updates - Every fund owner that has a fund in this deposit that received a contribution will receive an email briefly stating what contributions have been received. Only fund owners who have the "Send Notify Email?" option selected in the fund configuration will receive emails (See Managing Funds below).
    2. Print Receipts - Every donor that has at least one contribution with a line item will have a receipt printed. Single receipts can later be printed at any time by selecting the contribution and selecting "Print Receipt".
    3. Print Deposit Reports - Two reports are printed: the Bank Report displaying a breakdown by contribution type to be submitted with the money to the bank, and the Deposit Summary Report to be maintained as a hard copy record of the contributions received.
    4. Export to Accounting System - a comma-separated text file will be generated.  This export file is written for use with the PeachTree accounting package. (Note: currently this is a fairly restricted form of export.  If you have needs for other systems, please contact the developers.  We'll be happy to try to help.)
Even after the deposit is sealed, the above processing can still be re-executed via the menu options under the "Deposit" menu.

II. Other Features

5. Opening a deposit

To open an existing deposit:

  1. Select Deposit => Open...
  2. Enter the criteria to search for a deposit
  3. Select "Search"
  4. Select a Deposit and select "Open"

 

6. Copying a deposit

Sometimes a new deposit will be nearly identical to an existing one, such as doing a monthly EFT transaction.  To expedite data entry, you can simply copy a deposit:

  1. Open an existing deposit as discussed above.
  2. Go to Deposit => Copy...
  3. If desired, modify the basic deposit data.
  4. Select "OK"
The existing deposit is now copied into a new unsealed deposit that can be modified if necessary.

 

7. Searching

In Grace, you can search over three different sets of data:

  1. Contributions (Search => Contributions...)
  2. Donors (Search => Donors...)
  3. Deposits (Deposit => Open...)
The process for searching in each case is simple:
  1. Enter search criteria (as little as desired).
  2. Select "Search".
  3. View and manipulate results.

 

8. Fixing Sealed Deposits

Sometimes the user will discover erroneous data in a deposit that has already been sealed. Because the erroneous data has already been reflected on reports, the deposit itself cannot be altered, or the reports will not be in sync with the data in the system. However, a "fix" can be created for the erroneous data by making changes in a separate unsealed deposit. To make a fix, simply hit "Add" or "Modify" in the main window on a sealed deposit and follow the instructions given.

 

9. Reports

There are currently a number of reports available, including:

  1. Bank Report
  2. Deposit Summary Report
  3. Donor Giving History Report
  4. Donor Year End Report
  5. Fund Detail Report
  6. Fund Summary Report
The process for preparing reports in each case is simple:
  1. Go to Reports => Report Wizard...
  2. Select the report to be prepared and select "Next".
  3. Configure the report (this step will be different for each report) and select "Next".
  4. Choose the output method and select "Finish". There are currently two different output methods:
    1. Print: In Linux, reports are sent to your default printer.  In Windows, a PDF is generated, which you can then print.
    2. Web - this is intended for deploying a report to the Web. This is an advanced feature that requires extra configuration.  Please contact the Grace developers for assistance.

10. Checkreader

Grace is able to process check contributions by scanning them through a MagTek MICRImage Checkreader.

To scan a contribution:

  1. Go to Other => View Checkreader status
  2. Select "Use Checkreader" and select "OK"
    3. When adding a contribution to an open deposit as normal, Grace will indicate to either "SCAN, or Type enter to begin search"
  3. Place a check into the reader so that the front of the check faces the inside of the track and feed the check into the track.
  4. Once scanned, Grace will respond in one of three ways:
    1. If the check is successfully read and recognized: The donor and all the previous contributions associated with the check are retrieved.
    2. If the check is successfully read but not recognized: No donor is found to match the check. You may now search for a donor to associate with this check information.
    3. If the check is unsuccessfully or incorrectly scanned: The check is ignored.
See the manufacturer's website (magtek.com) for technical documentation on the Checkreader.

III. Administration

11. Managing Funds

To manage funds:

  1. Go to Other => Manage Funds...
  2. You can then either add or modify a fund or view a fund's log, all of which is straight-forward.

You can specify for a web deployment identifier string for each fund. This string must be different from all of the other funds in the database, and is used when creating the file name for the fund summary and fund detail reports when it is being deployed to the web.

 

Funds cannot be deleted (to allow for historical data to remain). However, you can render a fund "inactive" by modifying it and toggling the Active field. This will make it so that the fund is no longer displayed in the drop down menu when line items are being added. Also, the fund's report is not generated by default for the fund summary and fund detail reports.

A single fund owner can "own" multiple funds. However, that fund owner can have different values for "Send Notify Email?" for each fund that he owns.

 

12. Viewing Logs

All activity in the system is logged for security and historical purposes.  These logs track every time the user adds or modifies data in Grace. The full log can be seen by going to Other => View General Log... Subsets of the entries found in the general log can be found in logs pertaining to a particular deposit (Deposit => View Log...) or fund (Other => Manage Funds... => View Log...).

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