Recording a Single Gift

A check arrives in the mail, a donor hands you cash after a meeting, a broker transfers shares. This is the form for one gift at a time; for a stack of Sunday envelopes use Batch Gift Entry instead. Online gifts record themselves.

Where: left menu Donations, then Add Donation. Requires ledger editing permission.

The form, top to bottom

Donor. Start typing and pick the person or organization. Not in GoodBooks yet? Click New Contact next to the picker, enter a name (first and last, or an organization), and the contact is created and selected without leaving the form. For loose cash or a giver who doesn't want to be tracked, tick Anonymous Donation instead; the gift counts toward campaigns and deposits with no donor attached.

Donation Date is the day the gift was given, and it's the date that shows on receipts and giving statements. The bank deposit can be later.

Total Amount is calculated from the designations below; you don't type it.

Tags. If your organization tracks grants or uses tags, the active ones appear here as checkboxes so the gift can be tied to a grant or project.

Campaigns. Every gift is designated to at least one campaign. One row is the usual case: pick the campaign (each shows its fund), enter the amount. To split one check across two purposes, add a second row; the rows must add up to the check. A Grant column lets you tie the gift to a grant if you track grants.

Payment Type. Check, Cash, Card, ACH, Stock, In-Kind, DAF, QCD, and any types your organization has added. The choice matters in two places:

• Reference / Check Number applies to checks and similar.
• DAF and QCD gifts (donor-advised funds, qualified charitable distributions) are flagged so receipts and giving statements don't offer a deduction the donor already received.

Receipt Sent with a date records that an acknowledgment already went out (say, you mailed a letter), so the gift doesn't sit on the receipt to-do list. Leave it unticked and send the receipt from the donation page afterward; see Donation Receipts.

Notes are internal and never print on a receipt.

Stock and in-kind gifts

Record the gift with the Stock or In-Kind payment type and the value you're acknowledging. If the donor has an active pledge to a designated campaign, a pledge credit card appears under the payment type: tick it to count the gift's value toward their pledge. The credit shows in pledge tracking but never on a giving statement, where non-cash gifts are described rather than valued, as the IRS expects.

What happens after you save

• The gift appears on the donor's record and in the Donations list, and feeds the campaign totals, pledge progress, and the donor's giving tiles.
• Cash and check gifts wait for a deposit batch. Add the gift to a batch (or let Batch Gift Entry create one) and mark the batch deposited when the money goes to the bank; that's the moment it reaches your checkbook register.
• Send or print the receipt from the donation page whenever you're ready.

Good to know

• Recording a gift to a contributions account straight in the register skips all of this (no donor, no campaign, no receipt), which is why the register asks you to come here instead.
• Wrong campaign? Open the gift and use Change Campaign, before or after the deposit; see Changing a Gift's Campaign. For other mistakes on a gift that's already in a settled deposit, correct the books the way Fixing Mistakes in the Register describes.
• Plan limits count donor records, not gifts; a new donor created from this form counts toward your plan's donor-record limit.