Gifts and funds

Online gifts land in Trellis on their own. Cash and checks you enter yourself, either one at a time or as a batch from the plate. Admins and people with the Finance role can do everything on this page.

Everything here is under Giving, which has the tabs Overview, Gifts, Offerings, Funds, Statements, Reports and, for admins, Settings.

Count an offering

A batch is one stack of cash and checks counted together, like Sunday's plates or a week of mailed checks.

1. Open Giving and press Count an offering (or open the Offerings tab).
2. Check the Date, add a Name if you like, such as "Sunday 9am", and press Start counting.
3. For each check, enter the Amount, the Fund, Check under How, the Check number, and who gave it under Given by. Press Add to the batch. The form clears for the next one.
4. For loose cash, choose Cash under How and leave Given by blank. One line per fund is enough.
5. Check the Total, Cash and Checks at the top against your count.
6. Press Close batch.

While a batch is open, you can take a line off with Remove. Once it's closed, lines can only be corrected (see below). Press Reopen if you need to add more. Details lets you change the batch's name, date and note.

Record one gift

For a single gift that didn't come through the giving page, like a check handed in on a Tuesday:

1. Open Giving and press Record a gift.
2. Enter the Amount, Fund, How, Date and Given by. Add a note if it helps.
3. Press Record gift.

Find a gift

The Gifts tab lists every gift for a year, newest first, grouped by month. Change the year, pick a fund or a method, or search by name, check number or note. Each gift shows its date, fund and method, and whether it came online, from a batch, or is recurring.

Press a giver's name to open their page. ← Gifts at the top of it brings you back to the list, with the same year, search and filters.

Fix a gift

Press Edit on a gift to change who gave it, its fund or its note. Choose Nobody on the list (anonymous) to take a name off.

The amount, date and method of a gift never change once it's posted. To fix those, press Correct:

1. Enter the Correct amount, or leave it blank to reverse the gift entirely.
2. Give a Reason, such as "Check was for 50, not 500".
3. Press Post correction.

Trellis adds a reversing line, plus a new line with the right amount if you gave one. The history stays.

Correct isn't offered for online gifts. To give money back from an online gift, refund it in the church's Stripe dashboard (an admin can open it from Church settings, Payments, Open Stripe dashboard). The refund shows up in Trellis on its own, as a line marked "Refunded in Stripe".

Bring in giving from another system

If you're moving from Planning Center, Breeze, Tithe.ly, Pushpay or a spreadsheet, you can bring this year's gifts in so statements come out whole.

1. Open Gifts and press Import.
2. Paste the export, or choose the file.
3. Under What each column is, mark which column is the date, the amount, and so on. You need at least a date and an amount.
4. Check the totals by year and by fund against the old system's report. For any fund Trellis doesn't have yet, choose to create it, match it to one you have, or put it in the default fund.
5. Press the Post button, which says how many gifts it will post, and confirm.

Givers are matched by email, then by name. Gifts already in Trellis are skipped, so importing the same file twice won't double anything. The import lands in one closed batch, so you can review it together.

Funds

Open Giving, then Funds.

• + Add a fund: give it a Name and, if you like, A line for givers, which shows on the giving page.
• Make default: the default fund is the one the giving page has chosen to start, and where a gift goes when nobody picks.
• The arrows move a fund up or down. Givers see funds in this order.
• Edit: rename a fund, or set Taking gifts to Inactive, history only when a campaign ends. Inactive funds disappear from the giving page but keep their history.

There's no way to delete a fund, so its gifts are never lost. Make it inactive instead.

Set a budget or a goal

Each fund's Edit form has a Budget and goal section. Finance and admins can fill it in. The numbers show up in Giving reports.

1. Open Giving, then Funds, and press Edit on the fund.
2. Under Budget and goal, enter a budget for this year and one for next year, such as 2026 budget and 2027 budget. Type an amount like 25,000.
3. For a goal, enter the Goal amount, a date under Starting, and, if the goal has a deadline, a date under Ending (optional). A goal needs a start date. It can't end before it starts.
4. Press Save.

Each fund's line on the Funds page then shows its budgets and goal.

A budget is for a calendar year. A goal is for a stretch of time you choose, like a building campaign. It counts gifts to the fund from its start date, through its end date if it has one. Each fund can have one goal.

To remove a budget or a goal, clear the amount and press Save. Clearing a goal's amount removes the whole goal.

Amounts have to be more than $0. If Trellis can't read an amount, it tells you and saves nothing. It never treats an amount it can't read as a cleared one.

Copy budgets to a new year

In December and in January, the top of the Funds page has a button, such as Copy 2026’s budgets to 2027. In December it copies this year's budgets to next year. In January it copies last year's budgets to this year.

It only fills in funds that have no budget yet for the new year. A budget you've already entered isn't changed. Goals aren't copied. Then press Edit on any fund to adjust its new number.

With two campuses, a fund can be for one campus or for Every campus. A fund for one campus shows on the giving page with the campus's name beside it, and drops off the list if a giver picks another campus. See More than one campus.

The overview

The Overview tab shows the year's total, this month's, a bar for each of the last few months, recent gifts, each fund's share of the year, and recent payouts to the bank. If a payout also holds Registration fees, it says how much was gifts and how much was sign-up fees. Only gifts count toward giving.

Who can see giving

Only admins and people with the Finance role can open Giving. On a person's record, giving shows only to admins, the finance team and the person themselves. See Who can do what.

Still stuck? Ask Silas