About Electronic Statements

Electronic contribution statements, or E-Statements, are available now from your ParishSOFT Family Suite. E-Statements are easy to create, easy (and secure) for donors to get, and they cost your parish nothing extra. In fact, when you consider the time and expense of sending paper contribution statements through the mail, your parish is sure to save several hundreds of dollars and many valuable staff hours by offering E-Statement

Here’s What You Need to Know:

  1. Your ParishSOFT Offering and Pledges program gives you flexible filter and personalization options for both Paper Statements and Electronic Statements. Both statement options are compliant with IRS requirements for tax-deductible contribution reporting. These options are available in the Contribution Statements Report Setup area.
  2. You can generate E-Statements for all donors or for a specific selection of donors. (Just make sure you have all 2016 contributions posted before you generate any statements for tax-deductible giving.)
  3. When you choose the Electronic Statements option, ParishSOFT creates one E-Statement in PDF format for each donor based on your report selections. E-Statements are automatically and securely posted in the appropriate donor’s My Offering page in your parish’s My Own Church site. Your parish already has a My Own Church site, which is included free with your ParishSOFT Family Suite.
  4. Donors get their statements by logging into My Own Church and downloading the PDF file. Registration for a New User account is intuitive and easy for donors who do not already have a login. My Own Church offers many online services to parishioners, so creating an account is beneficial not just at tax time but all year long!
  5. You’ll want to let donors know their statements are available in My Own Church by sending them an email and a link to your my Own Church site, where they can either log in or create an account]. To make this easy, we’ve added an Export Givers Emails button to your software — clicking this generates a .csv file containing your donor names and email addresses. Use this list as is (or filtered as you wish) to notify donors via the email client of your choice.
  6. Electronic statements can be customized with a tailored “Body of Statement” message and signature.
  7. You can choose to generate electronic or printed contribution statements or both. Your system logs which donors have downloaded their electronic statement from My Own Church and lets you create a mailing list for those who have not — so you can save postage by mailing printed statements only to those who need them.
  8. Electronic statements are available to users of the ParishSOFT Offering and Pledges program on ParishSOFT Family Suite version 4.3.8.x and later.

FAQs About E-Statements and My Own Church

How do we promote My Own Church?

Place a My Own Church button and link on your website, send an email to members letting them how they can sign up for a New User login (if they do not already have one) and download their E-Statement. Learn more in online help and in the My Own Church Marketing Kit.

How do members sign up for a My Own Church account?

It’s easy! Illustrated instructions are available in our online help.

How do we create E-Statements?

To learn about this process, watch the video tutorial.

What’s the best way to announce that E-Statements are available?

Send an email to your members using the email service you’re most comfortable with. You can export a list of donor email addresses and generate a mail merge.

How do donors view E-Statements?

To learn about this process, watch the video tutorial.

What if some givers want an E-Statement but other prefer a printed, mailed statement?

The system keeps track of which givers have downloaded their E-Statements and makes it easy for you to use both methods. ParishSOFT filters your mailing list, so you save postage by sending paper statements only to those who need the printed copy. Learn more in this video tutorial.

How do we keep E-Statements secure?

Only approved users are allowed to log into My Own Church, and each user can see only the E-Statement for his or her contributions. The ParishSOFT system verifies all of the information in each My Own Church new user registration request against your parish records. If the system can verify all of the information in the registration request, it will notify the person and automatically send him or her an email containing login credentials. If the system cannot verify all of the information in a request, the user is not granted access unless your parish’s My Own Church administrator approves the request. Learn more in online help.