Transactions

Like everything in Rock, it all starts with people. People make financial transactions with your organization through gifts, donations, subscriptions or dues. These transactions can be simple (like money given to a single purpose) or they can be more complex (perhaps a single transaction covers multiple purposes). To be able to handle multiple purposes, transactions have one or more detail records to hold the information for each purpose.

In our example below, Ted has given $110 dollars to Rock Solid Church. One hundred of these dollars are designated for the General Fund account with the remaining ten dollars going to the Building Fund account.

Batches

Transactions that occur in a similar date range are grouped together into batches. These batches help organize the transactions. They also play a key role in integrating to your General Ledger account system. Instead of re-entering every transaction into your General Ledger, you can enter the batch totals knowing that Rock will keep the historical details for you to reference later if you need them.

In our example below a batch has been created for the weekly gifts for the Rock Solid Church.

Accounts

Accounts determine what a transaction is for. In our examples above, both the General Fund and the Building Fund are accounts. These accounts usually tie into your accounting system.

Pledges

While most of Rock's financial tools are designed to be multi-purpose, the concept of pledges is closely tied to the nonprofit world of donations. Pledges allows your members and guests to commit to an amount that they will be giving over a stated period of time.

Characteristics of Batches

Before we dive into looking at the screens that make up batches let's first review the characteristics of batches.

Working With Batches

Batches can be viewed under Finance > Batches. Below is a figure showing the batch list screen with the various filters that are available.

1 Filters:

The following filters help narrow the batches that are displayed on the list.

2 Batches:

The filtered list of batches with relevant fields.

3 Warnings:

Warnings will be displayed when control amounts do not match transaction totals.

4 Actions:

Clicking the checkbox next to batches and then selecting an action allows you to quickly open or close several batches at once.

1 Date Range:

The date range of the batch.

2 Amounts:

The transaction total, control amount and variance between the two.

3 Accounts:

This list shows account totals for the accounts that the transactions are tied to.

4 Match Transactions:

Batches that have been created by the transaction scanner need to have each transaction linked to an individual. This button takes you to the screen that assists with this process.

5 Transaction List:

A list of the transactions contained in the batch. Clicking on one of these transactions will take you to the details screen.

6 Add Transaction:

Assuming the batch is not closed, you can add new transactions to the batch.

Processing Cash Transactions

Cash transactions come in two formats: anonymous gifts and gifts given by a known person. Let's look at how we tackle each one.

Credit Cards

You can add credit card transactions manually by going to the person's Person Profile page. The transaction can be entered using the button on the Transaction List block from the Transactions tab.

Checks

Checks can be scanned using Rock's check scanning software. More information about setting up and using this software can be found in the next chapter. Once the checks are all scanned, they must be matched to individuals and their amounts entered into the correct accounts. We'll discuss that next in the Matching Transactions section below.

Matching Transactions

When you've used the check scanning software to add checks or scanned images of envelopes to a batch you must match them to individuals before you can close the batch. To start this process, open the batch you want to work on under Finance > Batches and then click the Match Transactions button.

This will launch a screen to walk you through each check (or envelope) and allow you to tie them to an individual and enter the amounts into the proper accounts.

1 Progress Indicator

2 Add Family:

You may find that the transaction is for someone who is not currently in the system. Using this button will pop up a new window where you can add them.

3 Settings:

Allows you to select which accounts you are entering amounts for.

4 Check Images

5 Individual:

Rock can match a person to the account and routing number of their checking account. If a person already matches the check's account information, you can pick them from the list.

6 Assign To New:

Assigns a new individual to the check’s account number.

7 Person Details:

The screen will present the currently matched person's address and contact information. This is a great way to not only ensure that you have matched to the current individual but also that their contact information has not changed.

8 Account Split:

Accounts are shown to allow you split the checks total across multiple accounts based on notes in the memo field of the check or outside of the envelope.

9 Navigation Buttons:

Buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you to go to the next record or re-visit a previously completed record.

Supported Scanners

Rock supports two types of scanners with its scanning tools.

Rock Check Scanning Software

Rock's check scanning software allows you to quickly and easily add checks to transactions in Rock. Let's walk through the process of scanning checks using this software.

First start by launching the software and logging in. Users must be a member of one of the groups below to log in using this software:

• Finance Administrator
• Finance User
• Rock Administrator

If this is your first time logging in, you'll also be asked for the web address of your Rock server. This is the address that the scanning software will upload checks to.

To scan checks, select a batch and click the Scan button.

The next screen lets you select which tender type you'll be scanning into Rock. In most cases you will be scanning checks, but you could also select Cash if you wanted to scan the envelopes that the cash transaction came in. When scanning checks, you can determine if you'd like to scan both sides of the check. You can also decide if you would like to enable duplicate document detection. With this enabled, the scanner will determine if two checks are stuck together by looking at the thickness of the paper.

Now the check scanner will start scanning checks. If there is a problem reading one of the checks, it will stop the scanning process and warn you of the error (upside down check, check facing backwards, etc.) From here you can delete the bad scan and attempt a rescan. Because of the speed at which the scanner operates, the problem check might be back a check or two. Use the navigation buttons to find the check in question.

Once the scanner finishes with the batch of checks in its hopper, you can add more and scan again. When you’re done scanning, press the Save button.

After pressing Save, the check images will be uploaded to your Rock server and you will be back on the batch screen. From here, you can add additional checks to the batch or create a new batch.

Installing The Rock Check Scanning Software

Installing the check scanning software is easy. It does require a Windows machine running Windows 7 or better to run. To install, follow the steps below:

1. First install the drivers for the scanner you'll be using. If you're using the Canon CR-series that will be the Ranger software that came with your scanner. In either case, these are simple installs.
2. Download the setup application under Admin Tools > Power Tools > External Applications > Rock Check Scanner.
3. Run the setup. The check scanning setup is a breeze with just three quick screens.

Software Options

You can change the options used by the scanning software anytime. To do this, select Options > Tools from the menu. You will see a screen similar to the one below.

1

The scanner that is currently configured.

2 Rock URL:

The Rock server address.

3Scanner Interface:

The type of interface currently set up (Ranger or MagTek).

4 Scan Image Color Type:

The color depth that should be used when scanning. Options will vary by scanner. The Ranger interface supports black/white, grayscale and color. Just understand that using an option other than black/white will significantly grow the size of your database.

Administrating Scheduled Transactions

You can view all of the scheduled transactions in Rock under Finance > Scheduled Transactions.

From there you can choose a scheduled transaction to edit.

1

Status of the schedule (active or inactive).

2

Scheduled transaction details.

3

History of changes and edits to the scheduled transaction.

4

Edit and delete buttons.

5

Listing of transactions that have been initiated by the schedule.

Personal Profile

Scheduled transactions can also be viewed on the individual's Person Profile page under the Contributions tab.

Scheduled Transaction Frequencies

The following options are available as frequency patterns for scheduled transactions. Each payment gateway will support only a subset of these options. Each gateway will also have some special rules for how they calculate the schedules. Notes on these rules can be found at the end of this document under the chapters for each gateway.

• Weekly: Every 7 days starting on the start date.
• Bi-Weekly: Every 7 days starting on the start date.
• Twice A Month: Twice a month. Usually this is used with the start date of the first of the month. Payments will then come out on the 1st and 15th of the month.
• Monthly: Once a month on that day of the month established by the start date.
• Quarterly: Every three months on the same date as the first payment.
• Twice A Year:Every six months on the same date as the first payment.
• Yearly: Once a year on the same date as the first payment.

Types of Giving Transactions

As we’ve seen earlier there are two types of giving transactions:

• One-Time Transactions: A single specific gift given on a single date.
• Scheduled Transactions: A reoccurring transaction that follows a set schedule (weekly, monthly, etc.)

External Website Tools

Rock provides several pages for your website guests to use to set up and manage their online transactions. These pages can all be found under the Give Section.

Giving Homepage

1

Links to the various giving management pages.

2

If the guest is logged-in, a personalized view of their scheduled transactions will be shown with the option to give now.

Give Now Page

The give now page is a flexible page that walks a person through the process of giving in a wizard-like fashion.

1 Entry Step:

The entry page is used to get the giving details from the guest. More information on this step and its settings can be found below.

2 Confirmation Step:

The next step in the process confirms what the guest has entered before saving and processing the transaction. The confirmation header and footer of this step can be customized from the block settings.

3 Final Step:

The final step provides the guest with the ability to save their account information (credit card or check account/routing number) for future use. It will also encourage the visitor to create a login to use for subsequent visits. Like the confirmation step, the header and footer can be updated from the block settings.

The entry step is by far the most complex. Let’s look at it in more detail.

1 Accounts:

The guest will first be asked to select the dollar amount they would like to contribute to each account. The accounts that are listed are configured via a block setting.

2 Additional Accounts:

You can also configure less-frequently used accounts to be added from a list.

3 Frequency:

This setting determines if the gift will be one-time or be configured to process on a schedule of their choosing. See the section Scheduled Transitions for details on the scheduling patterns for each option. You can disable the creation of scheduled transactions using the block settings.

4 When:

This determines when the gift will come out of their bank. When used with a scheduled transaction this will be the start date for the schedule.

5 Personal Information:

This is the name and contact information of the guest. If they're logged in, it will be auto-filled with their current information. If they change it here, this information will also be updated in the database.

6 Payment Information:

This contains the credit card or checking account information needed to process the transaction. The block settings define a payment gateway for both credit card and ACH (checking accounts). If you would like to disable either of these payment types, simply leave the gateway blank for the one you would like to exclude.

The giving entry block has a few other settings that you should know about. These include:

1. Batch Name Prefix: When the transactions are downloaded from the gateway, they're assigned to a batch. You can configure the names of these batches to all start with a certain prefix.
2. Source: For reporting, it’s good to know where a transaction came from. For instance, you might use this block on your main website or a web-based kiosk in your lobby. Knowing the source for every transaction will help you determine the success of each platform. New source options can be set up under Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Transaction Source.
3. Address Type: You'll want the address information the guest entered to be for their home address in most cases, but you can change this if you wish.
4. Layout Style: This setting determines if the layout should be:
   • Vertical: Sections are stacked vertically (default)
   • Fluid: Sections flow in a horizontal layout as they fit.
5. Display Option For Selecting Additional Accounts: Determines if the Additional Account option is shown.
6. Impersonation: This setting allows staff with proper ecurity to enter in gifts for individuals in the database. This is helpful in cases where the block is used internally.
7. Prompted For Phone: Determines if the guest should be asked to provide their phone number on the entry screen (default is no).
8. Prompted For Email: Determines if the guest should be asked for their email address on the entry form (default is yes).
9. Confirm Account Email Template: When a guest decides to create an account after confirming the gift, you can send them an email confirming this action. This setting allows you to select the email template to use for this email.

Transactions that occur from the Give Now page will be immediately processed through the payment gateway and added to a batch using the Batch Name Prefix block setting.

Giving History

This page shows all other previous transactions for the logged-in user.

1 Date Range:

This allows the user to filter the transactions shown to a specific date range. The default range is the first day of the current year as the start date and the current day as the end date.

2 Accounts:

Used to filter transactions based on the account. The list of accounts shown is configured on the block settings.

3 Summary:

Shows transaction totals based on the filters provided.

4 Transaction List:

Shows all the transactions based on the filters.

Manage Giving Profiles

This page allows the guest to managing any scheduled transactions they have created.

1 Profiles:

Listing of all configured scheduled transactions with the ability to edit or delete each one. This listing is created with a liquid template that allows you to modify the markup that's used to build the list.

2 Add Profile:

Button that allows the guest to create a new scheduled transaction.

Batches For Online Transactions

Unlike processing on-site transactions, which are manually entered, the creation of online transactions in Rock is an automated process. The steps differ a bit depending on whether the transaction is a one-time transaction or a scheduled reoccurring transaction.

Account List

This page shows a list of all the accounts defined in Rock.

Account Details

From the list above you can add or update an account using the account details screen.

1 Name:

The name that will be used when selecting an account.

2 Description:

This is a great place to document what the account will be used for and any details you'd like to keep about when and how it should be used.

3 Active:

Since accounts cannot be deleted if they are used by any transactions, you'll need to mark them Inactive once they should no longer be used.

4 Parent Account:

Rock allows you to create account hierarchies to help manage situations when you need to configure numerous accounts.

5 GL Code:

The reference code used in the General Ledger software.

6 Account Type:

This setting allows you to categorize your accounts to help with reporting. The setting has no impact on how accounts are used in Rock. The list of account types can be set under Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Account Types. You might consider using this setting to designate accounts that are used for donations vs. those you use for event registrations.

7 Public Name:

You might want to describe your account differently when it's shown on the public website. This field allows you to configure a public-friendly name for your account.

8 Campus:

If the account is specific to a campus, you can select the campus here.

9 Date Range:

The date range you provide here will help determine when the account is displayed on various screens in Rock. If the account is no longer valid, based on the date range, then it will not be displayed when picking from accounts.

10 Is Tax Deductible:

Helps determine if the transactions assigned to this account are considered tax deductible. This is used in reporting.

Managing Pledges

Pledges are frequently given via paper commitment cards. When this occurs, someone within the organization will need to hand-enter the pledges into the system. This can be done under Finance > Pledge List. From this screen you'll see a list of all pledges currently in the system. You can use the grid filters to help limit which pledges are shown.

1

Available pledge filters

2

Listing of pledges that match the filters provided

From this pledge list page you can update or add new pledges. The figure below shows this screen with the various options available.

1 Person:

This is the person who is making the pledge. For families you'll want to pick the head of house. As with many of Rock's financial tools, pledges can be viewed from a family perspective when linked to any adult in the family.

2 Account:

The account that the pledge is for. Often times this will be a unique account for a capital campaign or building fund.

3 Total Amount:

This is the dollar amount that will be given over the duration of the pledge.

4 Date Range:

This defines the duration of the pledge.

5 Payment Schedule:

This determines how often gifts (financial transactions) will be given to meet the pledge amount.

Self-Entry

When possible it's a great idea for members to enter their own pledges online. This not only allows you to reduce the amount of data entry, it also allows them to create a reoccurring giving profile to match their pledge. The sample external website that comes with Rock already has a pledge entry screen configured for you to use. You can find this page under Give > Pledge.

This pledge block on the external site has several block settings to make it is very flexible for you to use. These settings include:

• Enable Smart Names: This feature will attempt to find a matching person record in Rock to link the pledge to. This match will occur if a record exists with an exact match on first name, last name and email address. There’s also some logic built in to handle cases when someone types in Ted and Cindy or Ted & Cindy in the first name field. When this happens only the value Ted will be used in the search. If an exact match does not occur a new person record will be created with the record status of pending, for future review by an Admin.
• Account: If you provide a specific account as a block setting, the guest won’t have to pick one, and their pledge will automatically be assigned to this account.
• New Connection Status: In the case where a new person record must be created this will be the connection status that will be assigned to the record.
• Pledge Date Range: This setting allows you to assign a date range for the pledge. If you provide both a start and end date these values will be used, no dates will display and the guest will not have to worry about entering them.
• Show Pledge Frequency: Determines if the Pledge Frequency field should be displayed. You may not want your guest to have to provide this information.
• Require Pledge Frequency: There may be times when you would like to show the pledge frequency but not require someone to enter one. In other cases, you might want to require this item. With this setting you can have it any way you'd like.
• Save Button Text: This setting allows you to customize the text of the Save button.
• Note Message: The block allows you to provide a note to your guests to help explain the pledge in more detail.
• Receipt Text: This is the message that will be displayed to your guest upon saving. This is a great place to celebrate their commitment. It comes out of the box configured to link them to set up a reoccurring donation to match the frequency they selected. If one was not selected, it will allow them to pick one. This field supports liquid so you can personalize it.
• Confirmation Email Template: You can also select to send a template confirmation email after the save. This email template can use the same liquid merge objects from the Receipt Text field.
• Enable Debug: When you enable this setting, you'll see all of the available merge fields along with their values. This is helpful when you go to create your Confirmation Email and Receipt Text. These fields will only display after saving a pledge, so you'll need to save a sample one, and then delete it.

Once a person enters their pledge on-line you can still view and manage it using the same pages as described in the Internal Entry section above.

Pledge Frequencies

In several of the screens above, we mention picking pledge frequencies for determining how often someone will be giving towards their pledge. Rock comes pre-configured with several frequency values, but you can add to or edit them under Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Recurring Transaction Frequency.

Multiple Families

Since Rock allows people to be in multiple families, you can choose which family their giving applies to. This can be set from their Person Profile page by clicking the Edit Individual button. The Combine Giving With allows you to pick a specific family.

Individual Giving

There are situiations where even married couples will want their gifts split onto separate giving statements. If you leave the Combine Giving With field discussed above blank it will mark the individual as giving separate from the family.

Business Contacts

While businesses will be the source of donations and gifts (financial transactions), there will most likely be an individual that links the business to your organization. Being able to manage these relationships is important.

Once a business is saved, you can add contacts to the business from the individuals stored within Rock. These relationships can be viewed on the Business Detail page and also on the Known Relationships section of the Person Profile page of the individual.

Finance Security Roles

Finance User: The finance user role is allowed to view and edit basic finance information like batches and transactions. They are not allowed to make modifications to the configuration of the finance features. For instance, they can't add a new account.

Finance Administration: The finance administrator role is allowed to view and edit all finance information including configuration information like accounts.

Areas That Are Secured

The following areas of Rock have been secured to limit access to financial information. Only those in the finance roles will have access to the following:

• Finance Admin Pages: All the pages under Finance on the main navigation.
• Person Details Contribution Tab: The Contributions tab on the Person Profile page.
• Rock Check Scanner: Log-in to use this application.
• Data View Filters: Write data views that report on financial information. (Once the data views are created however, anyone who has permission to view the data view can run them. Be sure to secure the data views you create.)
• Reports: Creating reports. (Once the reports are created though, they can be run by anyone with view access to the report.)

Account Type

This groups or categorizes Accounts by their usage. It’s provided for you specifically to help with reporting and is not used by Rock for any specific purpose.

Credit Card Type

This defined type determines which credit card types your organization will accept. Each card type also has several configuration options. These include:

• Regular Expression Pattern: This pattern helps Rock determine if a given card number matches this type of credit card. The default values should not be altered.
• Batch Name Suffix: Many times accounting teams want online transactions to be placed in batches specific to the credit card types when they are downloaded from the payment gateways. The suffix is what helps group the cards into batches. If all the cards have the same suffix, they will all share a batch (default setting). If you'd like all the Visa transactions to be in their own batch, then you'd change the suffix to something like Visa.

Recurring Transaction Frequency

This defined type determines which frequency types you want to offer your guests. These options must be supported by your payment gateway to work, so don't add new ones and wonder why they don't show up.

Refund Reasons

This defined value is not currently used. It will be used in the future for event registration purposes.

Tender Type

Determines the method (Cash, Check, Credit Card, etc.) a person used to make a financial transaction. Tender Type is used to help describe the payment source for a transaction and is also used in determining how batches are created.

Transaction Source

This value helps determine where the transaction took place. This is helpful in reporting. Many of the transaction entry blocks allow you to pick this value, so by all means add additional items that make sense to your organization. For instance, if you run multiple websites with their own giving pages, you may want to make a new source type for each site. This will help you determine which is most effective in generating donations.

Transaction Type

This defined type describes what a transaction is for (contribution, event registration, etc.)

Available Payment Gateways

Currently Rock supports only a single payment gateway, PayPal's Payflow Pro. We expect several other gateways to be made available soon through community developers and possibly as a part of core. The PayFlow Pro gateway is a solid and reliable option that has been in use by numerous organizations for many years.

Configuring a Gateway

Payment gateways can be configured under Admin Tools > System Settings > Financial Gateways. There you will notice that there are actually two options: Payflow Pro and a Test Gateway. We created the Test Gateway as a way to allow Rock to come pre-configured in a way that allows an organization can sample Rock's tools without having to configure an actual payment gateway. Below is a screenshot of the various settings for the Payflow Pro gateway.

1 Login Information:

The various login criteria needed to work with the gateway.

2 Mode:

Whether the gateway is in Live or Test mode.

3 Batch Process Time:

This time determines the cut-off for creating batches when downloading transactions from the gateway.

Downloading Transactions

There are two ways to configure this download. The first way is to setup a Get Scheduled Payments job to run every night. This can be done under Admin Tools > System Settings > Jobs Administration. This job will run each night (or when you decide you want it to run) and create batches and transactions for new payments.

You can also choose to manually download the new payments from the payment processor. You can do this under Finance > Download Payments. This does the same thing as the Rock job but requires you to manually run the download.

Downloading transactions from the gateway is actually a bit trickier than you might think because of certain edge-cases and advanced features. We'll cover some of these next.

Setup

You can set up a new account at the address:

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/payflow-payment-gateway

A couple of things to keep in mind:

• Although the Payflow Pro service is run by PayPal, this is not a traditional PayPal account. Payflow Pro is a service that PayPal purchased from Verisign many years ago.
• Be sure to sign-up for the Payflow Pro not the Payflow Link account.

At the time of writing this manual, the costs for a Payflow Pro account were:

• Setup: $99
• Monthly: $25
• Gateway Fee: $.10 per transaction
• Recurring Billing: $10 per month

Unique Scheduling Notes

While most of the schedules like weekly, monthly, etc. are pretty obvious, there are a couple of notes you should consider about Payflow Pro's scheduling.

Once A Month

On a rare occasion, someone might say that they want their payment to be on the last day of the month. Since the number of days in the month varies this may seem impossible. With Payflow Pro however if you choose the start date as the 31st of the month, the payment will always occur on the last day of the month.

Installing the Statement Generator Software

Installing the statement generator software is easy. It does require a Windows machine running Windows 7 or better to run. To install, follow the steps below:

1. Download the setup application under Admin Tools > Power Tools > External Applications > Rock Statement Generator.
2. Run the setup. The statement generator setup is a breeze with just three quick screens.

Using the Statement Generator Software

Once you have it set up, it's pretty simple to operate the statement generator software.

Start by launching it and logging in. Users must be a member of one of the groups below to log in with this software:

• Finance Administrator
• Finance User
• Rock Administrator

Please note that if this is your first time logging in, you'll also be asked for the web address of your Rock server.

To generate statements, click the Start button.

The next screen lets you select whether you want to generate statements for All individuals with transactions or for a specific individual. If you select Single individual, you'll be prompted with a search box where you can type in a person's name. If more than one person is listed in the grid, click on the person you want to generate the statement for. Press Next to go to the next step.

The Account Selection screen lets you select one or more accounts you want to include.

The Statement Date Range lets you specify the date range. By default, it will show the January 1 of the current year as the Start Date and today's date as the End Date.

Select the layout you want to use for the statement output. Rock will ship with one default layout, but other custom layouts can be added by using the Dynamic PDF Designer, which can be downloaded from http://storage.rockrms.com/resources/DynamicPDFDesigner7.0.3.zip.

The statement generator will start to process the statements after you press Next on the Select Layout step. Once the Save As button appears, make sure you select a PDF output.

Software Options

You can easily change the options used by the statement generator anytime. To do this, select Options > Tools from the menu on the home screen. This is where you can change the Rock URL if needed, but it is especially handy if you want a different logo. The logo you choose will be what is shown on the statements.