Six Things You Don't Need to Do

You Don’t Need to keep track of account balances in your paper checkbook== Some treasurers still enter deposits and transfers and adjustments by hand into a paper check register and calculate the running balance in their checking account and try to match it with Jewel. But if you do that, you are making more work for yourself than you need to, because you are doing everything twice. Entering all checks, deposits, transfers and adjustments in Jewel creates a check register that is faster and more accurate than tracking it by hand.

You Don’t Need to Print the "Contribution Report - Detail" every month

A “Contribution Report – Summary” is available for printing as a church board report. (Settings can be found at Maintenance / Properties / Reports tab.)

If your pastor asks for a “Contribution Report,” manually print the "By Donor" version for him. Printing the "Detail" report every month just to file it, uses unnecessary paper and ink and could bulk up your storage folders by hundreds of pages per year. Since storage space for church records is an issue in many churches, deleting this report from your “Monthly Reports to Print” settings just makes sense.

If you are using the "Contribution Report - Detail" to double check the accuracy of your envelope entry, use it, then shred it. It doesn’t need to be filed.

NOTE: A treasurer once asked me, "Why is that report there if we don't need to print it?" It is a tool. And not all tools are used for all things. The Contribution Report - Detail is very useful when you need to find a certain donor within certain months or years, but is most effective as a search tool that is used within the program, not as a printout.

You Don’t Need to Print out a “Trial Deposit” for each offering

When you finish a deposit, and Jewel says that the total of the envelopes matches the offering total, there is no need to print a Trial Deposit to attach to your records. That report is only needed if your envelopes did not equal the offering total, and is used to help you figure out what is wrong. Printing a Trial Deposit report for every deposit will add from 50 to several hundred pages to your annual files. That means more paper, more ink, more time handling and filing, and more storage space.

You Don’t Need to enter all the numbers and slashes when entering a date in Jewel

Let's say you are entering October 10, 2026. In Jewel it would look like: 10/10/26. But if you enter 1010 and click “Enter” on your keyboard, Jewel will fill in the rest automatically. (This works within the current year)

If September 10 is the date you need, enter 0910, not just 910, because you need to give it four digits, but any date field in Jewel will do this for you. Deposits, Checks, Transfers, General Journal Entries, Reconciling, Reports. (This doesn't apply to dates in memos.)

You Don’t Need to enter the date and offering amount when you are importing AdventistGiving

Click on Start New Offering, Then click on "Import Offering." Click on “OK √.” Jewel will post a correct date and offering total as you finish the import.

==You Don’t Need to enter monthly interest for a Revolving Fund or savings account that is being reconciled quarterly==

Wait until you are actually in the process of reconciling, and use the “Interest Earned or Deposit Correction” button on the "Reconcile" screen.

Enter the total interest for the quarter all at once in the “Add Entry” box.

This accomplishes three things:

1. Ensures that the interest will be posted to the correct bank account.
2. Protects against forgetting that you already entered it, and accidentally entering it again, creating duplicates.
3. Simplifies the process, since you are entering one quarterly interest total rather than three monthly entries.

The memo should clearly identify the period and the source of the interest. Example: “2nd Qtr 2024 Revolving Fund interest”