Our contributions and accounting modules are similar in some ways, but also very different in what their intended purposes are.

Contributions deal only with money coming in. In particular, it's mainly related to money coming in from donations as well as some non-tax deductible payments such as those collected from a form or event registration. Whenever someone gives online using our giving platform or pays for items/tickets on an event form, those come into the contributions module.

Accounting, on the other hand, deals with ALL financial aspects of your organization and not just money coming in. This includes money going out (expenses), money you owe others (liabilities and accounts payable), money others owe you (accounts receivable), and more. It is the complete financial picture of an organization.

In addition, contributions are included with all One Church Software subscriptions. This means you can track your donors and manage everything related to donations and other online (and offline) payments without needing the accounting module. Accounting is an add-on and may require an additional fee depending on the subscription plan you have.

If you have the accounting module enabled on your subscription, do not enter contributions directly into accounting. Otherwise, those contributions will not appear on the donor's tax statement. Instead, enter them into the contributions area of the system and then post them into accounting to record them there as well. See this article for more information on entering contributions and this article on how to post them to accounting.

In this way, you can make sure those donations not only appear on the donor's tax statement but also have them be recorded as income for your church in the general ledger.