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.
Returned or voided checks: use "Cancel check"
If a check needs to come out because it was returned to the donor, bounced, or was entered in error, do not just remove it from the batch (that only un-groups it — the credit would stay on the member). Instead use the Cancel check button beside the check inside the batch (available until the batch is deposited).
Cancelling reverses the amount everywhere — the member's raised total, the Reports tab, and the totals — and keeps a Cancelled record with who cancelled it and why. Cancelled checks can't be re-batched and no longer count toward donation totals. Once a batch has been deposited (reconciled), its checks can't be cancelled; the money really is in the bank.