Complete Guide to Creating Great End of Year Giving Statements in Breeze

With the end of 2016 comes the need for many churches to send donors their contribution statements, showing them what they've given for the year. Breeze makes this task easy and we wanted to put together an article walking you through some common scenarios you might face.

While you can read the whole article if you'd like, here's a quick navigation to jump to the most applicable part of the page for your own context.

Product Update Note: In May 2018, two sections in contributions were renamed to bring additional clarity. The following videos/tools may reference these sections pre-update.

 
• Search is now Reports
 
• Reports is now Overview

Table of Contents

1. How to Create Basic Statements for All Donors

2. How to Customize Statements

3. How to Use a Template

4. Customize the Columns that Appear

5. Include Non-Tax Deductible Giving

6. Create Statements for Windowed Envelopes

7. Generate Mailing Labels for your Statements

8. Change the Statement Margins

9. Remove Header and Footer Information from Printed Statements

10. Create a Statement for an Individual

11. Create Statements for Donors who Gave Over $XX.XX

12. One Statement Per Family or One Statement Per Person

13. Print on Both Sides of Paper

14. Include a Summary of Pledge(s)

15. Removing Deceased People from Statements

16. Excluding Children's Giving

17. Print only for People without email addresses

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1. How to Create Basic Statements for All Donors

Here's a quick example showing how to create statements for all donors:

For more information take a look at our documentation on contribution statements.

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2. How to Customize Statements

Breeze allows users to customize statements so that they can appear just how they want them.  Here's a quick video showing how you can customize the appearance of your statement:

3. How to Use a Template

Here's a video showing how to use a pre-existing template:

Want to build off a template we've already built?  You can use one of our templates by navigating to the statements editor and clicking "Templates" in the toolbar.  More information on contribution statement templates can be found in our documentation.

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4. Customize the Columns that Appear

Let's say you want an itemized list of contributions but you only want the date, check number, and amount appearing for each gift without any other columns (such as fund, donor, etc).  You can include exactly the columns you want by tweaking the itemized list code.

Check out the "itemized list" row in this table within our documentation for more information.

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5. Include Non-Tax Deductible Giving

Breeze allows users to designate certain funds as not tax-deductible.  Contributions given to these funds will not show up on statements by default, but some churches may want to have these non-tax deductible payments show up in a separate area on the statement so donors can see all of their payments and understand the breakdown of what was tax deductible and what was not.  To include non tax-deductible information, just use the corresponding items under the "Mail Merge" toolbar option (click here for more information in our documentation).

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6. Create Statements for Windowed Envelopes

Windowed envelopes can be a great way to save time by having the recipient's address simply printed on the statement page and having it show up through the envelope window so that a separate address label is not needed.  The challenge is that the address then needs to line up with the window.  Simple tabbing or spacing within the statements editor typically doesn't achieve the goal as the second address line doesn't honor the indentation.  What we recommend is using tables.  To do so:

 
• In the statement editor, hover over the table icon in the toolbar and create a table 2 wide x 1 high
 
• Using your mouse, grab and stretch the table out to span the width of the statement
 
• Add the name and address mail merge options in the right table cell
 
• Put the cursor in the left cell and navigate to "Table > Cell > Cell Properties".  Give it a width (you could start with 150) and click "Ok".  This will adjust how wide a space you have to the left of your address.  Tweak this number until it matches your envelope windows.

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7. Generate Mailing Labels for your Statements

You can quickly print out mailing labels that correspond to the labels you've printed out by:

 
• Navigating to "More > Contributions > Statements"
 
• Click "Print"
 
• Click the dropdown arrow to the right of "Print Statements" and select "Print Mailing Labels"

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8. Change the Statement Margins

We recommend adjusting the statement margins by using the built-in browser controls. While different browsers have different interfaces for how to adjust the margins, my personal favorite is Chrome. The video above shows how to quickly adjust the margins in Chrome and instantly see how it will affect the formatting of your statement.

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9. Remove Header and Footer Information from Printed Statements

When printing from a browser, often times you'll encounter text on the very top and bottom of the page that the browser puts there - usually a web address and sometimes a date or a page number.  Needless to say this is a bit unprofessional.  The good news is that it's easy to remove.  This is a browser setting so you'll just need to tweak the setting in your browser before printing.  We recommend using Chrome and the video above shows how to quickly remove the header and footer content when printing in Chrome.

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10. Create a Statement for an Individual

If you need to generate a statement for just one person or family, rather than for everyone or a group of people, you can do so right from their profile. Here's how:

11. Create Statements for Donors who Gave Over $XX.XX

Here's an example video showing how to generate statements for families that gave over $600 for the year.

In the video, the "Search by Sum" checkbox tells the search to look at the sum of all giving for the whole year, rather than the amount of each individual gift. The "Group by Family" checkbox tells the search to look at the combined sum for all family members, rather than each family member individually.

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12. One Statement Per Family or One Statement Per Person

When generating statements, it's easy to specify if you want the statements to be by family (all family members included on the same statement) or by individual (everyone gets their own statement). Here's the setting showing how you can control this:

13. Print on Both Sides of Paper

If you'd like to print on both sides of the paper, you'll want to be sure that the front of one person's statement never ends up on the back of another person's statement. This can be tricky if the number of pages for each statement vary (e.g. some have 2 pages, some 3). Using the two-sided feature will ensure that the front of one statement never ends up on the back of another.

Note that at this point, the only browsers that properly support this are Internet Explorer and Edge.

14. Include a Summary of Pledges

If you want to include pledge information (either along with giving information or in place of giving information), simply modify your statement to include it. Here's how.

If you're looking for more customization options, see our documentation on customizing statements.

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15. Removing Deceased People from Statements

Below is an example video showing how to remove a deceased individual from a statement:

If you'd like to learn more, check out our documentation on archiving people and moving contributions from one person to another.

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16. Excluding Children's Giving

When printing statements, there may be some contexts where you'll want to remove children's giving from families' giving statements.

Note that 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 was originally generated by an adult is tax deductible for the 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.

Here's a video showing how to exclude children from a giving statement.

Note that at this time, excluding children's giving can only be done on printed statements (not emailed statements).

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17. Print only for People without email addresses

If you'd like to only print end of year statements for people who do not have email addresses, you can do exactly this. This is ideal if you'd like to email people their statements but still want to send physical statements by mail to those you're unable to email.  To do so:

 
• Navigate to "More > Contributions > Statements"
 
• Click "Print"
 
• On the "Print For" dropdown select the option "Donors without Email Addresses"
 
• Click "Print Statements"

Additional Resource

We hope these videos are extremely useful as you put together your 2016 year end statements. If you'd like a little assistance in what to include, feel free to check out our previous article on how to create a great year end statement. You can also view our full documentation on statements within Breeze here.

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