Transferring Online Giving to Your Church

When transferring donations from Breeze to your church/organization's bank account, you can have the money transfer either automatically on a routine schedule once a week (highly recommended) or manually. If you have not already enabled Online Giving in Breeze, check out this article on Online Giving Setup.

When setting up transfers, you'll have the option for the available (cleared) money to automatically be deposited into your account on a specific day each week (automatic transfers) or for you to manually push the deposit over whenever you'd like (manual transfers). Click on the options below to learn more information about them. 

Automatic Transfers Manual Transfers

Our recommended approach is to use Automatic transfers which allow you to have a batch of donations automatically deposited into your church's bank account once per week. Using this method will allow you to easily reconcile a transfer to the individual payments that make up that transfer, and quickly gather the fund totals for the transfer to record in your accounting software.

When setting up Online Giving, the default Transfer Day for Automatic Transfers is Thursday, as we have found this day works best for most organizations to ensure you receive funds in the quickest fashion (see the timing example calendar below for examples). 

Viewing Previous/Upcoming Transfers

To view transfers that have already taken place or are scheduled in the future:

  • Navigate to Giving > Online Giving.
  • Towards the bottom of the screen click on the Transfers tab. 
    • The Transfers tab allows you to report on transfers to your bank account. 
  • When viewing the Most Recent Transfers, the upcoming Scheduled Transfers will be at the top of the list. Previous transfers, or transfers in transit, will show below.
    1. You can Filter Transfers further. By default, the report pulls in the Most Recent transfers, but you can also report transfers over a period of time (Week, Month, Quarter, Year) by using the filters at the top.
    2. Use the filtering drop-down bar that corresponds with the filter you selected to more narrowly filter your options. 
    3. Use the clickable Report Columns for more advanced filtering within your results.
    4. To see individual payment details of a transfer, and reconcile the funds of that transfer, click the View Payments link in the Details Column of the transfer you would like to view the details on. 
    5. Each Transfers report type has a Total Overview section that breaks out the Gross, Fees, and Net Totals for the Transfer Filters you selected, that have been successfully transferred to your bank account on file. 

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Processing Fees / Timing 

Below are the standard processing fees if your church or organization is located in the United States of America and using Breeze for Online or Text Giving. 

Each payment takes time to process and clear before being available to transfer to your bank account. The processing time depends on both the type of gift (credit card, debit card, or bank transfer) as well as business days. Donations received on weekends or bank holidays do not start to process till the next business day.  These are industry standard processing times. 

Below is a table to show you the fees for each type of gift, and how long it takes for a gift to process before the funds become available to transfer to your bank account. 

Method Amount Processing Time Before Funds are Made Available
Credit/Debit Cards 2.9% + $0.30/transaction 2 Business Days
AMEX - American Express Charge/Credit/Debit Cards 3.5% + $0.00/transaction 2 Business Days
Bank Transfers (ACH) 1% + $0.25/transaction

7 Business Days

Less Common Fees
  • Failed ACH Gifts (Bank Transfers) incur a $1 Fee.
  • When a donor successfully disputes a transaction (e.g. credit card company or bank pulls back the funds), a $15 fee is incurred.
    • Credit card companies and banks allow account holders to dispute a transaction if they believe it was not legitimate (e.g. fraudulent, inaccurate, etc). If a credit card holder disputes a transaction, you'll have a chance to argue your case. If a bank account transfer is disputed, the money will be pulled back without a chance to argue your case. These dynamics are related to the banking industry and are not specific to Breeze.
  • Cross Border International Fees: Transactions processed through Puerto Rico based churches may incur an additional 1% charge due to Stripes cross-border international fee. This includes transactions that originate in any other US territory that isn't on the mainland (with the exceptions of Alaska and Hawaii.) Additionally, transactions from individuals who are based in the US, that are from an international bank, or a card that is tied to an international account, may be subjected to an additional 1% fee.
  • International Visa and International MasterCard transactions associated with Canadian accounts, can incur an additional 0.3% charge, making the total 3.2% for international cards (this fee does not apply to American Express cards).

Transfer Timing

When automatically transferring money from Breeze to your bank account, the funds should show up in your account the day you have selected for transfers. This is because we initiate the transfer the evening before, your transfer will show "In Transit" once the money is being transferred to your bank. (Some banks may take up to 24 hours to receive and post-money to your account). 

We typically recommend a Transfer Deposit Day of Thursday, as this works for many of the churches who use Breeze, ensuring that you receive your funds as quickly as possible after being made available for transfer.

 

Timing Example Calendar

Here are some specific examples of how the timing works for different transfer dates and different payment methods. All examples are assuming gifts are given on Sunday. 

In this example below the transfer day is the default day of Thursday: 

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In this example below the transfer day is set to Monday:

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How To Change The Transfer Day

By default the transfer day is set to Thursday:

  1. Select Giving.
  2. Select Online Giving on the left.
  3. In the top Next Transfer Box (at the top of the screen), it will state "$XXX (amount) will transfer to BANK ACCOUNT (ending in XXXX) on Date (change)". Hit the word (change). 
  4. Adjust the Transfer Weekly on day using the drop-down. 
  5. Click Save.

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Additional Information

  • When changing the date of automatic transfers, you will need to allow for at least 48 hours before the transfer can take place. You should get a warning if you select a day within 48 hours of the current day, letting you know that this may cause a transfer to be delayed until the next week.1
  • Breeze is designed to work with one bank account and is what we recommend as best practice. If you are needing to separate out funds to different accounts, this should be done after the transfer using your accounting software. 
  • Changing the Bank Account for Online Giving Transfers
  • If you are looking for more information on how to Reconcile Online Giving check out this article. 
Bank holidays will only affect churches whose transfer date is set for that day. For example, if the bank holiday is on a Monday and the transfer day is set for Monday, then the church will see a delay in transfers of one business day. If viewing transfers on the bank holiday, their Breeze account will not show a transfer for this week, but they’ll see that change the following business day.