Using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Apps

If you feel that you must accept donations via peer-to-peer (P2P) apps such as Zelle or CashApp, here are the steps necessary for appropriate tracking. It is imperative that the church treasurer creates/designs a spreadsheet to keep track of the contributions from each of the various P2P platforms that your church chooses to use. For each app, you must:

1. At the end of each period, e.g. the 15th and 31st of each month, go online to the bank account or app and record all the extra donations from that app.
2. Print out the donation information from the app or from the donor's email or other communication to the church treasurer regarding donation allocation. File these in a way that allows the auditor to easily trace which Jewel deposit they correspond to.
3. On a spreadsheet, enter the date, donor name, total amount, and allocation of the funds donated.
4. Prepare a deposit in Jewel for the total amount received from that app during that period, using a different offering date from the regular collection of weekly church offering envelopes. (If the app charges fees, the Offering Total should equal the amount deposited, not the amount donated.)
5. If fees were charged, enter a Jewel envelope with a negative total for the fees. The Donor Name can be Anonymous/No Name, or you can set up a specific Donor Name for fees. The Account can be Church Budget, or you can set up a specific account. Either way, all amounts on this envelope should be negative.
6. Enter a Jewel envelope for each contribution with name of the donor, total amount and allocation of funds donated. On the Make Deposit screen, use the Memo to, record the beginning and ending dates of the offering period and which app the donations are from, e.g. Zelle donations 2/1/25-2/15/25.
7. For apps such as CashApp that require manual transfer of funds from the app to the church bank account, transfer the exact amount of the deposit you just entered into Jewel. For apps that periodically transfer funds automatically, ensure that your Jewel deposit matches the amount the app deposited, and choose the app’s period so that donations end up credited to the calendar month in which they were donated. For apps that deposit directly into your bank account, ensure that your Jewel deposit matches the total of the donations from that app during the same designated period.
8. Then at month-end when doing the bank reconciliation, the cleared deposit will be the total deposit for that period's spreadsheet (not the individual donations from Zelle, CashApp, etc.)
9. At year-end, you may need to do a separate deposit for transactions that were initiated before midnight on 12/31, but were not deposited until January. These transactions must be recorded in December.