How "Ready for Batch" works
Ready for Batch is the staging area for offline donations — cash, checks, and other physical gifts that weren't paid by card online. It only shows cash/check/other donations; card donations are processed by Stripe and never appear here.
Think of this section as the desk where collected checks pile up, waiting to be bundled into a single bank deposit. A donation lands here once it has been physically collected and is not yet part of a batch. From here you select the ones you're depositing together, create a batch, and hand that batch to your finance contact.
The chain of custody (where the money goes)
Every offline donation moves through the same hand-off chain. Each step has its own card on the Donations tab:
- Recorded — a team member enters a cash/check gift they received. It shows up under "My Donations to Turn In" on that person's screen.
- Turned in — the team member clicks Turn In to say "I've handed the physical check/cash to my leader." It then appears under "Pending Collection" on the leader's screen.
- Collected — the leader physically receives the money and clicks Mark Collected. The donation now drops into ✅ Ready for Batch.
- Batched — the leader selects collected donations and clicks Create Batch. They leave Ready for Batch and become a deposit batch under 📦 Batches.
- Submitted → Reconciled — the batch is handed to the finance contact (or a finance user reconciles it directly) and finally marked confirmed at the bank.
Shortcut: if a leader records a donation they already physically hold, there's no turn-in or collection hop — it lands directly in Ready for Batch. ("Ready" means collected or no hand-off needed, and not yet attached to a batch.)
What this section does
- Lists every collected offline donation not yet batched, with donor, amount, payment method (and check #), and which traveler the gift is designated for ("For").
- Lets you select donations with the checkboxes (or Select All) and bundle them into one deposit with Create Batch.
- Lets you fix mistakes before batching — the ✏️ edit and 🗑️ delete buttons only exist here, because once a donation is in a reconciled batch it's locked.
Reading the count and totals
The header count — ✅ Ready for Batch (N) — and the footer count physical checks, not allocation rows. A single check that was split across several travelers counts as one check (its rows share a split group), even though you'll see a row per traveler. When the check count and the row count differ, the footer shows both, e.g. "Total (3 checks · 5 allocations)". The Create Batch button likewise shows how many physical checks you've selected.
Who can see and act on it
Ready for Batch is leaders only — trip leaders, co-leaders, and support, plus org admins, super admins, and finance users. Regular team members never see it; they only see their own "My Donations to Turn In" card. This keeps physical money in the hands of the people responsible for the deposit.
What happens after you create a batch
A batch is the unit you hand to finance. Once created it appears under 📦 Batches with a status badge:
- Created (blue) — bundled but not yet sent. You can still delete the batch; deleting it does not delete the checks — they return to Ready for Batch to be re-batched.
- Submitted (amber) — handed to your finance contact for deposit. You can export a CSV or email the deposit detail.
- Reconciled (green) — confirmed deposited at the bank. This locks the batch; its donations can no longer be edited or deleted.
If you're a finance-designated user, the middle hop is collapsed — you can Reconcile the batch directly instead of submitting it to someone else, and export a CSV to take to the bank or send to accounting.
Quick start
- Make sure the donations you're depositing show collected (they'll be sitting in Ready for Batch).
- Check the boxes for the checks/cash going into one deposit, or click Select All.
- Click Create Batch.
- Take the matching physical checks to the bank, then either Submit the batch to finance or, if you handle the deposit yourself, Reconcile it once it clears.