Is the Bank Deposit module useful for volunteers counting offerings at events or services?
Yes, specific volunteers or postholders are commonly given a specific user role to login into ExpensePlus and record cash and cheque collections at the point of counting, for others to later bank and reconcile.
Some organisations record offerings or collections from specific services or events individually via this method. Others may choose to collate donations and record the amount on a weekly or monthly basis at the point of banking in the branch.
The bank reconciliation module will allow you to match bank statement transactions (of bank deposits) to either single or multiple bank deposit records, so as long as the total amount is correct. You can choose to do this either way, according to your preference.
Creating the user role
To create a user role for this purpose, follow the steps below. Consider the appropriate permissions for that user role:
- From the side menu, select 'Settings' and the select 'Users';
- Click 'Manage User Roles', followed by 'Add New';
- Type in an appropriate name such as 'Offering Counter'
- In the permissions table, under the subheading 'Income', tick next to 'Bank Deposit - All Bank Accounts' in the 'Standard' column. Users with this setting can create bank deposits for all accounts. If you wish to give permission on an account by account basis, you can do this through the bank settings screen;
Once you have created this user role and allocated a user to the role of 'Offering Counter' (for example), they will have a login where their access is restricted to the Bank Deposit module only.
They will see only one option on sidebar menu.
Hiding donor names
If you want to anonymize the named donor records within the Bank Deposit screen, and just show 'envelope numbers', you can hide donor names within 'System Settings' as per the image below.
You can learn more about hiding donor names here.
To help you better understand the Bank Deposit module as a whole, please visit the module overview page here.