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Overview

The Financial Reconciliation System helps you track, match, and distribute church finances efficiently. It automates the process of reconciling bank and mobile money transactions, attributing them to members and locations, and calculating distributions according to your church’s financial policies.

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Accessing the system

Navigate to Admin → Financial Management in the sidebar. You’ll find:
  • Accounts — Manage bank and mobile money accounts
  • Import Transactions — Upload statements
  • Reconciliation — Match transactions to members
  • Distributions — Calculate and track money distributions
  • Category Rules — Set up automatic categorization
  • Reports — View financial summaries

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Weekly workflow at a glance

Steps 1 and 2 are one-time setup. Steps 3–7 repeat every week.

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Step 1: Set up financial accounts

Before importing any transactions, create the accounts that money flows through.
1

Go to Financial Management → Accounts and click + New Account

2

Fill in the account details

3

Click Save and repeat for each account

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Step 2: Set up category rules

Category rules automatically classify transactions based on date, time, or keywords — saving significant manual work during reconciliation.

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Default categories

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How to create a rule

1

Go to Financial Management → Category Rules and click + New Rule

2

Set the rule name, category, and priority

Higher priority numbers are evaluated first (range: 0–100).
3

Set conditions

Conditions narrow when the rule fires. Leave a condition blank to apply it to all transactions.
  • Accounts — Which accounts this applies to
  • Keywords — Words that must appear in the narration
  • Date Range — e.g. Jan 1–31 for Arise & Build
  • Time Range — e.g. 09:00–12:00 for service offerings
  • Days of Week — e.g. Sunday only
4

Click Save

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Rules to create from the start

Marks Sunday morning mobile money transactions as Offering rather than Tithe.
Catches building-fund transactions throughout January automatically.
Categorizes special donations by narration keyword.
Anything that doesn’t match a rule defaults to Tithe. You can always override the category manually during reconciliation.

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Step 3: Import transactions

1

Go to Financial Management → Import Transactions

2

Configure the import

  • Account — Which account these transactions belong to
  • Default Category — Usually “Tithe”
  • Apply service time rules — Tick this to auto-mark Sunday morning transactions as Offering
3

Choose your file and click Preview Import

The system shows all detected transactions. Review the date, amount, name, phone, narration, and auto-detected category for each row. Rows with errors are highlighted in red. Click any category to change it.
4

Click Import Transactions

A success message shows the count and total amount. Click Go to Reconciliation to continue.

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File format requirements

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Step 4: Reconciliation

Reconciliation links each transaction to a known church member — or flags it for follow-up.

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The workbench

Go to Financial Management → Reconciliation. Three tabs:
  • Pending Review — Transactions waiting to be matched
  • Matched — Reconciled transactions
  • Disputed — Transactions flagged for follow-up

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Confidence scores

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Your matching options

If the suggestion is correct, click Approve. The transaction moves to “Matched” and the phone number is saved for future transactions (improving future confidence scores).
  1. High confidence (>90%) — Bulk approve in one click
  2. Medium confidence (70–89%) — Review individually, approve or edit
  3. Low confidence (below 70%) — Manual match or mark disputed
  4. Disputed items — Review weekly; escalate after 30 days unresolved

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Step 5: Calculate distributions

After reconciling the period’s transactions, generate the distribution.
1

Go to Financial Management → Distributions and click + New Distribution Batch

2

Configure the batch

  • Name — e.g. “Week 45 2024” or “January 2024”
  • Period Type — Weekly, Monthly, or Custom
  • Date Range — The period to include
  • Include — Tick “Approved matches only” (recommended)
3

Click Calculate Distributions

The system shows a summary by category and a detailed table of every distribution line.
4

Review and edit if needed

Click any amount to edit it manually. The system validates that all totals balance.
5

Save or submit

  • Save as Draft — Come back and edit later
  • Submit for Approval — Send to leadership for review
  • Approve — Finalize immediately (requires approval permission)

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Distribution rules

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Step 6: Execute transfers

After the distribution is approved, make the actual money transfers, then record them in the system.
1

Execute transfers in your bank or mobile money platform

Transfer each amount according to the distribution. Note the reference number for each transfer.
2

Open the approved distribution batch

Go to Financial Management → Distributions and open the approved batch.
3

Mark each transfer as complete

Check the box next to a completed transfer, click Mark as Transferred, enter the bank reference number, and save. The status changes to “Executed” with the date.To record several at once, select multiple rows and click Mark All as Transferred — a window opens for entering reference numbers in bulk.

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Step 7: View reports

Go to Financial Management → Reports, select a report type, set your date range and other filters, then click Generate Report. Use Export to Excel to download.

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Common weekly workflows

Every Monday morning:
  1. Download last week’s Mobile Money and Bank statements
  2. Import both files (Mobile Money → Central MM account, Bank → Central Bank account)
  3. Reconcile: bulk-approve high-confidence matches, manually match the rest, mark anything unclear as disputed
  4. Calculate the distribution for last week
  5. Submit for leadership approval
Monday–Tuesday:
  1. Leadership reviews and approves
  2. Execute transfers in bank/MM
  3. Mark transfers as completed in the system
  4. Generate the weekly summary report

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Tips & best practices

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Phone number matching

The system normalizes phone numbers automatically. +256772123456, 0772123456, and 772123456 all match the same contact. Spaces and dashes are ignored. Once a number is matched and approved, the system remembers it — future transactions from that number will score 95%+.

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Auto-match accuracy improves over time

To improve accuracy: always approve correct matches (teaches the system), add payment methods when matching manually, keep contact records up to date, update member locations regularly.

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When you can’t identify a sender

  1. Check with leadership — ask if anyone recognizes the number or name
  2. Call the sender directly if possible
  3. Mark as Disputed and add a note
  4. Review disputed items every week
  5. After 30 days unresolved, discuss a policy decision with leadership

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Service time offerings

Mobile money received on Sunday between 09:00 and 12:00 is auto-marked as “Offering” when the rule is active. You can still change this to “Tithe” during reconciliation if needed.

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Troubleshooting

  • Check file format — Ensure you have Date, Amount, and Name columns
  • Check date format — Use a consistent format throughout the file
  • Check amounts — Remove currency symbols (UGX) and commas
  • Try searching by first name only, then last name only
  • Verify the phone number is correct
  • If the contact doesn’t exist, create them first via People → Add Contact, then return to reconciliation
  • Refresh the page — sometimes the calculation needs a refresh
  • Check any manual edits you made to amounts
  • Delete and recreate the distribution batch to recalculate from scratch
  • Check your permissions — you may need approval rights
  • Check the batch status — it may already be approved
  • Contact your admin to request the approval permission
  • Click Edit on the match
  • Change the location to the correct branch
  • The distribution will update automatically when you recalculate
  • Refresh the page — a colleague may have approved it while you were reviewing
  • Check the Matched tab — the transaction is likely already there
  • Move on to the next pending item

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Permissions