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1-844-PUSHPAY Church contribution statement software for year-end giving
How to evaluate church contribution statement software, and what the 2026 deduction for non-itemizers means for year-end giving statements.
Starting in the 2026 tax year, people who take the standard deduction can deduct up to $1,000 in cash gifts to charity (money given by any method, including check or card), or $2,000 on a joint return (IRS Topic 506).
That puts a church gift on the tax return of members who previously have not itemized.
To claim it, they need the record the IRS asks for on any cash gift: a bank record, or a written communication from the church with its name, the date, and the amount. Members who give online or by check have the bank record.
A member who puts bills in an offering envelope has only your statement.
So your year-end statement now matters at tax time to more of your congregation. Formatting it is the easy part. When you choose contribution software, the harder question is whether every gift reaches the right donor, under the right fund, with the right date, long before anyone clicks generate.
Statements start at gift entry
A year-end statement only shows gifts attached to a donor profile. The software pulls each profile’s gifts for the date range and groups them by fund, so a gift that never attached to anyone won’t appear on any statement.
Online gifts arrive already attached to a donor. Checks and envelope cash don’t.
Someone on staff or the counting team matches each of those gifts to a donor and a fund at entry. Whatever they record is what the statement prints, including a gift matched to the wrong donor or coded to the wrong fund.
One record for cash, checks, and online giving
If check gifts live in a spreadsheet and online gifts live in a giving platform, your statement run starts with merging two exports, and any gift that doesn’t match a donor in the merge drops off the statement. Pushpay’s Check Deposit & Gift Entry scans checks and records them in batches alongside digital gifts, so a donor’s statement draws on one history instead of two exports.
When you compare tools, ask what happens to a gift with no donor. Loose plate cash should post to the books without one. An envelope gift shouldn’t post until it has one.
Gift dates at the year boundary
The IRS counts a mailed check as given on the date it’s mailed, so a check mailed in late December and received in January belongs to the year it was mailed. A card gift counts in the year it’s charged, even if the donor pays the card bill the following year (IRS Publication 526).
If your entry screen stamps each gift with the date it was entered or deposited, checks mailed in late December land on next year’s statement.
Ask whether the tool lets you set a gift date separately from the deposit date. And keep the envelopes from checks that arrive in early January, so the postmark backs up the date you entered.
Before you generate anything
A statement prints whatever the donor record holds. December is the time to clean up the records.
Review donor and household records
Start with duplicates. When one person gives under two profiles, such as an online account and a separate record created at check entry, their giving splits across two statements. Merge the profiles before statements run.
Then decide on grouping. Individual statements suit spouses who file separately and adult children still listed in a parent’s household. Household statements suit couples who file jointly. Pushpay’s Household Giving Statements group family members into one giving unit, so one spouse’s online gifts and the other’s checks land on the same statement.
Detailed or summary statements
IRS Publication 1771 allows one annual summary to acknowledge several gifts of $250 or more. The recordkeeping rule for cash gifts asks for more: the date of each contribution, which a summary total doesn’t show. For envelope cash givers, whose only record is your statement, send the detailed version, with every gift listed by date, amount, and fund.
A summary works for donors who give online and want a single page, since their bank or card records already carry the dates.
Plan digital and print delivery
The IRS accepts acknowledgments by email, so print is for members without an email address on file. Pull the list of those members in the fall, while there’s still time to collect the missing addresses. Self-serve download lets members pull their statement without calling the office.
Which tax-reporting features should you compare?
A sample statement in a demo shows you the layout. It doesn’t show whether the gifts behind it are right.
Statement options and acknowledgment language
Check for these in every demo:
- Date ranges: annual, quarterly, and custom periods.
- Single-donor reissue: correct one gift and regenerate one statement without rerunning the whole congregation.
- Grouping and format: household and individual statements, each available detailed or summary.
- Editable acknowledgment text: the no-goods-or-services line, the intangible religious benefits line, and the deductible-amount note for gifts where the donor received something in return.
- Noncash gifts: a description field that prints without a dollar value.
- Delivery: email, print, and donor self-serve download.
Fund tracking and donor acknowledgments
A gift designated to missions or a building campaign has to stay in that fund and appear under it on the statement. The fund heading on the statement is how a donor confirms the gift went where they sent it.
Audit history and user permissions
Giving records are financial records and personal data at once, and not everyone who handles them needs to see all of it. Entering a batch doesn’t require access to donors’ giving histories, and fund-level reporting doesn’t require seeing individual gifts. Look for access set by role rather than person by person, so a new volunteer starts with the right limits.
Audit history answers a different question: who changed a gift, and when?
Once statements go out, any edit to a prior-year gift means a donor may be holding a wrong statement, and the log tells you who needs a corrected one. A trail on every edit is also a basic financial control. In a demo, ask the vendor to edit a posted gift and show you the record of the change.
Should contribution software integrate with accounting?
Yes, if your giving platform and your ledger are separate systems.
Without an integration, fund totals get re-entered in the ledger by hand, and each re-entered number is a chance for the statements and the books to disagree. Look for fund mapping set once in the software, so a fund called Missions in the giving platform posts to the same general ledger account every time.
Pushpay isn’t an accounting system. It posts giving to QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, and Aplos as journal entries, with each fund mapped to its account. It doesn’t connect to QuickBooks Desktop, so confirm which version your bookkeeper runs. Our church accounting software guide compares the ledgers side by side.
Simple or integrated for a small church?
Start with where your data lives now. A church with a volunteer treasurer and a handful of funds can run a giving tool with built-in statements next to a separate ledger. Once giving, membership, and attendance sit in separate systems and staff spend time matching names across them, an integrated church management system removes that step, because the donor profile and the member profile are the same record.
ChurchStaq runs giving, church management, and apps from one database, so there’s no second system to match names against.
The cost of integration is setup. An integrated system asks you to clean and migrate more data at once, and if your membership records are a mess, the mess moves with you. For smaller congregations weighing that tradeoff, see our guide to giving platforms for small churches.
Implementation and pricing
A church that switches giving platforms midyear has to issue statements that include gifts from both systems. Ask every vendor how historical gifts import and whether they print on the new system’s statements. If you can avoid it, don’t cut over in the fourth quarter. A first-quarter switch gives you most of a year to catch import problems before a statement depends on them.
When you compare quotes, ask whether payment processing fees, check scanners, and migration help are included or billed separately.
IRS rules and church habits
Some of what churches treat as tax law is only convention.
What the IRS requires
For any single contribution of $250 or more, the donor needs a contemporaneous written acknowledgment from the church (one the donor has in hand by the date they file or the return’s due date, including extensions, whichever comes first). The acknowledgment names the church and states the amount of any cash gift. Property gets a description, not a value. It also has to say whether the church provided goods or services in exchange, and if the only thing the donor received was intangible religious benefits, the acknowledgment can say so (IRS Publication 1771).
Separate gifts under $250 aren’t added together to reach the threshold. Below it, a bank record or the church’s written record of each gift is enough.
The IRS puts the burden on the donor to obtain the acknowledgment. The church’s part is to provide it.
What’s convention
January 31 isn’t an IRS deadline for church statements. It’s a sensible target because filing season opens in late January.
Sending a statement to every donor, including small-dollar givers, is also convention. Keep doing it. Under the 2026 deduction for non-itemizers, small cash gifts can now count toward a member’s deduction. Quarterly statements fall in the same category: helpful, optional.
Goods, services, and noncash gifts
When a donor pays more than $75 and gets something back, such as a ticket to a fundraising dinner, the church owes a written disclosure.
The disclosure tells the donor the deductible amount is limited to what they paid above the value of what they received, with a good-faith estimate of that value. Publication 1771 requires it when the church asks for the payment or receives it, so it belongs on the invitation or on the receipt the donor gets at payment. Skipping it costs $10 per contribution, up to $5,000 per event or mailing.
Tag ticket payments and other gifts that came with a benefit at entry, too, so the year-end statement shows the deductible amount instead of the full payment.
Noncash gifts get described, not valued, on the acknowledgment. A stock gift appears as a number of shares of a named company, and the donor establishes the value.
On the donor’s side, claiming more than $500 in noncash gifts means filing Form 8283 (the IRS form for noncash charitable contributions), and property worth more than $5,000 generally needs a qualified appraisal, with publicly traded stock as the exception.
Gifts that need a tax professional
Software formats a statement. It doesn’t decide what’s deductible.
Some gifts need a tax professional’s read before they land on a statement. A benevolence gift earmarked for one specific family generally isn’t deductible. A donated vehicle claimed at more than $500 needs Form 1098-C, which the church files with the IRS and sends to the donor. Check current IRS guidance each fall, too, since 2026 already changed who can deduct a church gift.
Questions about church tax receipts and donor statements
What should a church contribution statement include?
A complete statement includes:
- The church’s name and the donor’s name
- Each gift’s date, amount, and fund
- A description of any noncash gift, with no dollar value
- A statement that the church provided no goods or services other than intangible religious benefits, or a description and good-faith estimate of anything it did provide
A year total and a thank-you are customary. For a sample layout, see our church contribution statement example.
Can churches send year-end donor statements electronically?
Yes. IRS Publication 1771 allows the acknowledgment to be provided electronically, such as by an email addressed to the donor.
How should a church compare statement software with Aplos?
Aplos is fund accounting software that also handles online giving and donor statements, so one vendor covers both the ledger and the giving side. Pushpay has no general ledger of its own, and Aplos is one of the ledgers it posts to.
If a single vendor for ledger and giving matters most, evaluate Aplos on its own. If you’d rather keep giving and member records in a church management system, run that system with Aplos or another ledger underneath.
Test five donors before the year closes
In early December, pick five donors whose giving you can verify by hand, and pull the source records for each:
- A household where two people give through different methods: both people’s online giving history and the check images, all of which should land on one statement.
- A weekly check writer: check images and deposit slips for the year to date.
- A recurring online giver: the giving platform’s transaction history for the year to date.
- Someone who gave stock: the transfer notice, which should appear on the statement as shares with no dollar value.
- Someone who bought a fundraising event ticket: the ticket price and the value you disclosed, with only the difference shown as deductible.
Generate their year-to-date statements from your current system and compare every line against those records. If one comes out wrong, check other donors whose gifts were entered the same way, and fix the entry step while there’s still a month before statements go out.
If you’re evaluating Pushpay, bring the same five cases to a demo and ask to see each statement built from gift entry forward.
