Recording cash and check gifts

Plenty of giving still arrives the old way — cash and checks in the Sunday plate. Psalmly lets you record those gifts per giver, right alongside online giving, so the totals, history, and year-end statements Psalmly already produces reflect all of your church's giving, not just the digital part. Recording is part of the church's books, which come with the Community and Growth plans, and there's no fee of any kind on cash — the money never touches Psalmly.

On the free plan, Record offering shows a lock, and pressing it says which plans include it. Anything your church recorded before stays in the ledger, on every giver's statement, and in every export. See Managing your plan and billing.

You'll find it on your Giving page: a Record offering button sits in the header from the moment your church exists. Recording needs no online-giving setup — you never have to connect Stripe to log the plate. Like the rest of the Giving page, recording is limited to lead admins and to admins a lead has given finance access. Online giving is the optional add-on; if you set it up later, recorded and online gifts share the same ledger, totals, and statements.

Logging Sunday's plate

Real plates arrive as a batch — one date, one counting sheet, several gifts. Record offering works the same way:

• Offering date — one date for the whole batch. It defaults to today; change it when you're catching up on an earlier Sunday.
• Count sheet — optionally attach a photo or PDF of your paper counting sheet. It's kept private to your admins and stays linked to the batch, so you can always check the entry against the paper.
• The gifts — a short list of rows, one per gift. Add as many as you need; a running total at the bottom should match your count sheet.

When you save, the gifts appear immediately in your giving ledger with Cash or Check chips, right in line with online gifts — one list, no separate log to reconcile in your head.

Loose cash and attributed gifts

There are two kinds of rows:

• Loose plate cash — the counted cash total with no giver attached. It counts toward your fund totals but never appears on anyone's statement.
• Attributed gifts — usually checks. For each one, pick the giver, enter the amount, choose the fund (a designated check like "building fund" goes here), set cash or check (with an optional check number), and add a note if you like.

The giver field is the part worth a moment's care, because it's what makes statements complete. Start typing a name — any word of it works, so "R. Alvarez" finds Richard Alvarez — and you'll get these ways to attribute the gift:

• A member — pick them from your directory. The gift lands in their own giving history and on their year-end statement automatically.
• Someone on your roster — pick a person you've added to the directory who doesn't use the app; they show a "No account" tag in the list. Their cash and check gifts are kept under their name, and you can download a year-end statement for them from their giving page (See their giving on their roster profile) — so a faithful giver who'll never open the app still gets a proper record. See People without an account.
• Someone new to the roster — choose "Add … to the roster" and Psalmly creates a person without an account with that name and puts the gift on them, all in one step. They'll be in your Directory and count toward your plan.
• A non-member — type a name and choose "Use … as a non-member." The gift is recorded for your church's records and exports under that name, but a typed name is on no one's statement, and it adds nobody to your Directory. That's fine for a one-time visitor; for anyone who gives again, add them to your roster instead. Gifts already recorded under a typed name can be matched to the right person later from Giving by person — every gift under that name is matched at once.
• Anonymous — the gift counts in your totals but the giver is hidden from your church reports. If you matched a member or roster person first, the gift still appears on their own statement — anonymity only hides them from the church's reports, never from their own records.

One thing recording never does: send an email receipt. A gift given in person shouldn't trigger a surprise "payment receipt" email — the year-end statement is the acknowledgment.

What your members see

Nothing extra to do here — a matched member's cash and check gifts simply show up in their own giving history, their year-to-date total, and their downloadable statement, on the web and in the mobile app, right next to any online gifts. See Receipts and tax statements for the member's-eye view.

Scanning the count sheet

Psalmly AI can read your count sheet for you. Attach the photo, press Scan sheet, and the batch fills itself in — the loose-cash total and each check with its payer's name and amount. A payer's name that exactly matches one member or roster person is picked for them; any other name stays typed for you to match. Handwriting is genuinely hard, so a scan is always a head start, never a finished entry: match each remaining name, double-check any amount that looks off, and then save. Nothing is recorded until you confirm.

One scan reads up to 100 checks. If a sheet has more, Psalmly says so rather than guessing — record it as two offerings, with a photo of each half, or type the rest in by hand.

Each scan uses one of your church's monthly AI credits, shared with the rest of Psalmly AI. If you run out for the month, the scan pauses and you type the batch by hand until credits reset.

Fixing mistakes

Open any recorded gift from the ledger to see its details — giver, fund, method, date, and the count sheet it came from. From there you can Edit it (fix a typo'd amount, move it to the right fund, re-match the giver) or Delete it. A delete can be undone for a moment from the toast, and the change flows through totals and statements automatically. On the free plan a recorded gift opens with all its details but no Edit or Delete. Gifts recorded under a typed name can still be matched to the right person from Giving by person — matching works on every plan.

Where the money side stays

Recording moves no money: nothing touches your Stripe account, and there's no platform fee — you're simply completing your church's giving records. The digital side (payouts, processing fees, refunds) is unchanged; see Payouts, fees, and where your money goes.