How to reconcile Stewardship Grant Income
This help guide article covers how to reconcile grant payments from Stewardship.
Within ExpensePlus there are 3 choices for how to do this (you will need to pick the one that will work best for you):
- Option 1: Reconciling grant payouts as 'Income Received' - This is the simplest option, with income from Stewardship recorded as a Grant from Stewardship and not split against the supporting donors. This grant income will not appear within your donation reports.
- Option 2: Splitting payouts against support donors manually using the 'mixed income' option - This is typically the best and quickest option where you have only a few people who give with Stewardship, since it involves manually recording the different donations given that make up the grant amount received each time.
- Option 3: Splitting payouts against support donors automatically by uploading payout transactions - This option is typically best where you have more than 5 people giving with Stewardship as it saves having to manually record donations.
Note: If your first Stewarship payment relates to donations before you started using ExpensePlus (e.g. you started using ExpensePlus on 1st April 2024, and your 16th April 2024 payout includes some donations in March), you will need to use option 2 for the first month and then use option 3 for successive months. This is because ExpensePlus will strip out any bank transactions (from your Stewardship statement) which precede your ExpensePlus start date.
Option 1: Reconciling grant payouts as 'Income Received'
Reconciling Stewardship payouts on your bank statement
When you reconcile your uploaded bank transactions, select the grant received from Stewardship on the left-hand table of your match transactions screen, click the + button, then, in the popup that appears, select the transaction type as 'Other Income' and enter the transaction details.
TOP TIP: Shorten the description to remember to 'STWDSHP' to enable future grant payments from Stewardship to auto-reconcile as part of the 'Quick Match Income' functionality.
Option 2: Splitting payouts against support donors manually using the 'mixed income' option
Reconciling Stewardship payouts on your bank statement
With this option, when you reconcile your uploaded bank transactions, select the grant received from Stewardship on the left-hand table of your match transactions screen, click the + button, then within the popup that appears select the transaction type as 'Mixed Income'.
Note: you will need to set up Stewardship as a donation method - click here to find out how to do this.
Within the next screen, enter the details for the donations that were part of the grant payment from Stewardship:
IMPORTANT: When reconciling Stewardship donations:
(1) You should always ensure the 'donation method' is set to 'Stewardship'
(2) You should not record any donations as 'GASDS Donations'
Note: where donors give anonymously, you may wish to create a donor called 'Anonymous Stewardship Donations'.
Option 3: Splitting payouts against support donors automatically by uploading payout transactions
Reconciling Stewardship payouts appearing on your main bank account statement
When you reconcile your uploaded bank transactions, select the grant received from Stewardship on the left-hand table of your match transactions screen, click the + button, then, in the popup that appears, select the transaction type as 'Payout from Payment Processor', and then select your Stewardship account.
Note: you will first need to set up Stewardship as a payment processor account - click here to find out how.
Note: This will temporarily make your account balance of your Stewardship go negative (it should have been zero previously).
Note: Although the way that donations with Stewardship are managed within ExpensePlus is no different from payment processors such as LoveGiving, SumUp, Stripe, GoCardless, ChurchSuite, etc. payments from Stewardship are technically different since they are made as 'grants'.
Downloading Stewardship transactions
Within your Stewardship account, download the payout report that corresponds to the grant payment you have just matched on your bank statement.
Select 'Activity' from the top menu, and then select 'payments'.
Select the 'download' option for the payout you wish to download.
Importing Stewardship transactions
Within the bank reconciliation screen, select your Stewardship account and click 'upload transactions'.
This should return your Stewardship account balance to zero (because the net total of the transactions, in the payout report you've just uploaded IN to this account, should exactly match the amount paid OUT, since the payout went from this account into your bank account).
IMPORTANT NOTE: If your latest account balance within ExpensePlus for your Stewardship account is not zero, we highly recommend you fix this issue BEFORE you reconcile transactions - please see this separate help guide article.
Reconciling Stewardship transactions
The bank matching process works similarly to a regular bank account, with the ability to remember and quick match transactions. This means that once you have reconciled donations for the first month, you won't need to manually enter transactions for future months - but simply click the 'quick match income' button at the top of the match transactions screen.
Where transactions haven't been previously reconciled and auto remembered:
Named Donations
(1) select the transaction in the left-hand table of the match transactions screen;
(2) click the '+' button to the right of the transaction;
(3) select the 'Named Donation' option in the popup and enter the details.
IMPORTANT: When reconciling Stewardship donations:
(1) You should always ensure the 'donation method' is set to 'Stewardship'
(2) You should not record any donations as 'GASDS Donations'
Note: where donors give anonymously, you may wish to create a donor called 'Anonymous Stewardship Donations'
Why is my Stewardship statement not uploading?
- First Name (each transaction must contain a first name)
- Last Name (each transaction must contain a surname)
- Amount (each transaction must contain a non-zero amount)
- Type (each transaction must contain a type that indicates if its donation income is 'regular', or Gift Aid 'tax')
- Transaction Date (each transaction must contain a date)
- Project Name (each transaction must contain a purpose/allocation)
(Additional columns can be present but won't be imported).
Why are donors' details not showing?
Note: Stewardship is a donor-advised charity, whereby givers donate to Stewardship, usually into a Giving Account, and then the Giving Account Holders (Stewardship Donors) make requests to Stewardship, to support charitable causes. Stewardship as a charity retains the right to act upon the requests of donors and on rare occasions will decline to make grants that the donor has requested. Stewardship undertakes due diligence on all of its Partners before making grants. All the payments it makes to churches and charities are grants.
A feature for donors giving with Stewardship is they can request that their support is anonymous, therefore you may not be provided with the donor's details. Stewardship undertakes its own due diligence on gifts made to it and does not take anonymous gifts from its donors.