How to reconcile Parish Giving Scheme (PGS) Income
This help guide article covers how to reconcile regular donations given via the Parish Giving Scheme.
Many churches prefer regular donors to give via bank transfer or standing order directly to the church as it's easy for donors, and easy for your church as well. ExpensePlus automatically reconciles recurring income, and claiming Gift Aid is automated too!
By donors giving directly to your church, you will avoid the direct fees that your church gets charged when donors give a one-off donations via the Parish Giving Scheme, as well as the indirect fees the the CofE pays centrally for every donation given via the Parish Giving Scheme.
Within ExpensePlus there are 2 choices for how to reconcile Parish Giving Scheme Income (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 Parish Giving Scheme not split against the supporting donors. This grant income will not appear within your donation reports, and you will have no visibility of these donations within your donation reports in ExpensePlus (typically not recommended).
- Option 2: Uploading PGS Transactions - This option is typically best for most churches using PGS, as it then allows for the PGS transaction report to be uploaded into ExpensePlus, and transactions to be auto-matched.
Option 1: Reconciling payouts as 'Income Received'
Reconciling Parish Giving Scheme payouts on your bank statement
When you reconcile your uploaded bank transactions, select the Parish Giving Scheme 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.
Important: Parish Giving Scheme makes two payments per statement each month - one relating to donations, and the other relating to Gift Aid (but the description they use doesn't differentiate between the two). Therefore, in order to record each payout to the correct income category, we'd highly recommend that you UNTICK the Remember this Transaction box each time you reconcile Parish Giving Scheme payouts so that the payout doesn't get auto-remembered (resulting in both the donations payout and Gift Aid payouts getting allocated wrongly to the same category for future payouts).
Option 2: Uploading PGS transactions
Reconciling Parish Giving Scheme payouts appearing on your main bank account statement
When you reconcile your uploaded bank transactions, select the payout from Parish Giving Scheme on the left-hand table of your match transactions screen.
Click the + button next to the transaction, and in the popup that then appears, select the transaction type as Transfer from Payment Processor and then select your Parish Giving Scheme account.
Note: you will need to set up Parish Giving Scheme as a payment processor account before you can do this - click here to find out how to do this.
If you are using Parish Giving Scheme for processing both regular monthly donations as well as accepting one-off donations, then you only need to add PGS as a payment processor once (unless you wish to set up both separately).
Note: Parish Giving Scheme typically makes multiple separate payouts each month. You should record each as a 'Transfer from Payment Processor'.
WARNING: Once downloaded, don't edit or resave the file, or change the file format from .CSV to .XLS/.XLSX, as it may stop the file uploading to ExpensePlus properly.
Importing Parish Giving Scheme transactions
Within the bank reconciliation screen, select your Parish Giving Scheme account and click Upload Transactions.
The upload process works similarly to a regular bank account, except that each line on the statement will shows as as up to three transactions within ExpensePlus:
- one relating to the donation
- one relating Gift Aid (if applicable)
- one relating to fees (where a one off gift is given)
Important: It's worth noting that the PGS transaction report may include transactions that were given within the month you are viewing, but not paid out until the following month. As a result, your end of month PGS account balance may not necessarily be zero
Reconciling Parish Giving Scheme 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 Parish Giving Scheme transactions 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
The donation amount given should be reconciled using this option:
(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 Parish Giving Scheme donations:
(1) You should always ensure the 'donation method' is set to Parish Giving Scheme
(2) You should not record any donations as GASDS Donations
(3) You should record the Gift Aid of a donation as Other Income (not as a named donation, otherwise your donation reports will be incorrect)
Note: where donors give anonymously, you may wish to create a donor called 'Anonymous PGS Donations'
Other Income
The gift aid arising from a donor's donation should be reconciled using this option:
(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 Other Income option in the popup and enter the details
Why is my Parish Giving Scheme (PGS) statement not uploading?
Most likely, you have modified or re-saved the Parish Giving Scheme statement you have received (which you should not do). If this is the case, we'd recommend you download the file again.
For regular PGS Statements, the file must contain ALL of the following headers (spelt exactly as stated below):
- Date (each transaction must contain the donation date)
- Name (each transaction must contain the donor's name)
- Frequency (each transaction must contain the donation frequency)
- Gift (each transaction must contain a donation amount)
- Gift Aid (each transaction may contain a Gift Aid amount, even if this is zero)
- Transaction fees (each transaction must contain a fee amount, even if this is zero)
(additional columns can be present but won't be imported).
- The file format should be .CSV
To better understand the Bank Reconciliation module, please view the module overview video here.