Sending Statements

Updated: March 14, 2024 14:48

Discover how to efficiently distribute giving statements to your donors with Breeze. Tailor statements by grouping them by family and choosing whether to include children's giving. Explore printing options for individuals, groups, or the entire church. Email statements to recipients based on specific criteria or send them to all donors at once. Learn to save statements digitally for convenient record-keeping.

Once you have Customized your Statements it is time to send your statements to your donors. When Sending Statements, depending on who you decided you wanted to generate your statements for, you will want to follow the corresponding instructions below to print, email or save the statements as digital copy.

Understanding Group By Family Options

As you select the option you are going to be sending statements by, you will want to consider if you would like to group statements by family and if you would like to include children's giving on the statement.

When sending statements, it's easy to specify if you want them to be generated by a family or an individual. Let's look at some scenarios:

"Group by Family" Scenarios:
- If all the contributions have been credited to Fred Flintstone throughout the year, and you select to “group by family”, the statement will be addressed to both Fred and Wilma (the spouse).
- If some donations are credited to Fred and other contributions are credited to Wilma, and you select to “group by family”, both of their names and giving will be included on one statement together.
Deselecting "Group by Family" Scenarios:
- If some contributions are credited to Fred and other contributions are credited to Wilma, and you deselect "group by family", a separate statement will generate for each person.
- If all the contributions have been credited to Fred Flintstone throughout the year, and you deselect "group by family", Wilma’s name (the spouse) will not be included on the statement.

While we are not professional accountants, and you should contact your church's accountant (i.e., this is not professional advice), our understanding is that money given by children that an adult originally generated is tax deductible for that adult. In other words, the only child giving that would not be tax deductible for the parents would be for children who have their own jobs and are giving from the income they receive at their job.

Include Children Scenario
- If some donations are credited to Fred or Wilma (Parents), and Pebbles (a child) has giving recorded within Breeze, if you select “including children” when sending statements, the child's giving will be included on the statements.
Exclude Children Scenario
- If some donations are credited to Fred or Wilma, and Pebbles (a child) has giving recorded within Breeze, if you select “excluding children”, the child's giving will not be included on the statement.
- Review this article: Printing Statements of Children to generate a statement for children separately.

Note: If you group by family while emailing statements and you include children, children who have given, and have an email address in their profile, will receive a copy of the family's contribution statement. Reference Using Family Roles to understand what to do with adult children who should receive their own statement.

Printing Statement Options

Statements can be printed for a specific person, a group based on a filter, or everyone in the church.
Printing a Specific Person's Statement:

Navigate to the person's profile you'd like the statement for.
Click "Giving" on the left navigation bar.
Towards the upper right of the screen, find the "Download as Excel" button and click the arrow just to the right of it.
Select "Print Statement" from the dropdown list, and then click the "Print Statement" button.

Printing Statements Based on a Report:
Printing a giving statement based on a report filter allows more control over what appears on the giving statement. You can filter by fund, amount, or any other criteria, and only contributions that match the filter will be used when creating the statement.

Get giving transaction reports for the giving transactions you'd like to include in the giving statement.
Towards the upper right of the screen, find the "Download as Excel" button and click the arrow just to the right of it.
Select "Print Statement" from the dropdown list and click the "Print Statement" button.

Printing All Donors' Giving Statements:
To print a statement for all donors¹:

Navigate to "Giving > Statements."
Click "Print."
Select the desired date range, if you are grouping by family or including children, and click "Print Statements."

¹Printing statements for all donors will print statements for people who have given in the specified date range (including archived people, even if the person running the statements cannot view archived people). People who have not given in that date range will not receive a statement.

Printing Statements for all donors without email addresses:
To print a statement for all donors without email addresses¹:

Navigate to "Giving > Statements."
Click "Print."
Change "Print For" to "Donors without Email Addresses"
Select the desired date range and click "Print Statements."

Image_2020-12-15_at_2.24.06_PM.jpg

¹To further understand the logic of who gets an emailed statement, and why some families will generate both an emailed statement and printed for those without email addresses view this article Which family member gets an emailed statement?

Emailing Statement Options

Emailing statements allows users to send statements to an individual via email. Statements are sent as attached PDF files. If sent to multiple people, each recipient will receive only their giving statement as an attachment.

Emailing a Specific Person's Statement

Navigate to the person's profile you'd like to email the statement for.
Click "Giving" on the left navigation bar.
Towards the upper right of the screen, find the "Download as Excel" button and click the arrow just to the right of it.
Select "Email Statement" from the drop-down list.
Compose your email and click "Send."

Emailing Statements Based on a Report

Emailing a giving statement based on a filter allows more control over what appears on the giving statement. Users can filter by fund, amount, or any other criteria, and only giving transactions that match the filter will be used when creating the statement.

Find giving transaction reports for the giving transactions you'd like to include in the giving statement.
Towards the upper right of the screen, find the "Download as Excel" button and click the arrow just to the right of it.
Select "Email Statement" from the drop-down list.
Compose your email and click "Send."

Emailing All Donors' Giving Statements

Emailing statements to all donors will email statements to people who have given in the specified date range (including archived people). People who have not given in that date range will not receive a statement.

Navigate to "Giving > Statements."
Click "Email."
Select the desired date range and click "Continue to Compose Message."
Compose your email and click "Send."

If a person is on the "do not email" list, statement emails will still go through If you'd like to print a group of statements for everyone, yet keep some as individuals, and others grouped as families, you can group by tags, and then filter by tags in the reports.

Saving statements as a digital file

Sometimes, you'd like to save your statements digitally instead of printing or emailing them. If that's the case, here are the step-by-step instructions. We prefer that you use Google Chrome for this:

From the Dashboard, go to Giving > Statements
Click on Print > Select Your Date Range and Click "Print Statements"
Choose "Save as PDF" as your Print Destination (Google Chrome)
Then click" Save" to save it onto your computer.