Budget Filters

Understanding Budget Filters in GivFlow

Welcome to GivFlow! As you track donors, donations, and budgets for your church, understanding how to effectively use budget filters is crucial for accurate reporting and analytics. This guide will walk you through how budget filters work, specifically focusing on Fund Filters and Campus Filters, and important details you need to know about how donations are processed.

What is a Budget in GivFlow?

In GivFlow, a Budget is essentially a collection of funds that you want to track together. Budgets allow you to monitor giving trends, track donor development, and generate analytics for specific areas of your church's finances.To make budgets even more powerful, you can apply filters to them. Filters allow you to narrow down the data included in a budget based on specific criteria.

Types of Budget Filters

GivFlow currently supports two primary types of filters for budgets:Fund FiltersCampus Filters

1. Fund Filters

A Fund Filter allows you to restrict a budget to only include donations made to specific funds.How it works:When you apply a fund filter to a budget, GivFlow will only calculate totals, track donor statuses, and generate analytics based on donations that are explicitly designated to the selected fund(s).Example Use Case:If you have a "Missions Budget," you can apply a fund filter to only include the "Local Missions Fund" and the "Global Missions Fund." Any donations made to the "General Tithe Fund" will be excluded from this specific budget's analytics.

2. Campus Filters

A Campus Filter allows you to restrict a budget to only include donations associated with a specific church campus. This is especially useful for multi-site churches that need to track budgets and donor development on a per-campus basis.How it works:When you apply a campus filter to a budget, GivFlow looks at the campus designation of each donation. Only donations that match the selected campus will be included in the budget's calculations.

⚠️ Important Note on Campus Processing

There is a critical processing rule to be aware of when using Campus Filters:If a budget is using a Campus Filter, GivFlow will NOT process a donation against that budget (or update donor development metrics for that budget) until the donation has a campus designation.Why does this matter?Sometimes, donations are imported or entered into the system without an immediate campus assignment. If a donation lacks a campus designation, GivFlow cannot determine if it belongs in your campus-filtered budget.Therefore, the donation will remain "unprocessed" for that specific budget until a campus is assigned to it. Once the campus is assigned, GivFlow will automatically process the donation and update the budget and donor development metrics accordingly.Best Practice:To ensure your campus-filtered budgets are always up-to-date, make sure your donation entry or import processes include assigning a campus as early as possible.

Summary

Budgets are collections of funds used for tracking and analytics.Fund Filters restrict a budget to specific funds.Campus Filters restrict a budget to a specific campus.Crucial Rule: Donations must have a campus designation before they can be processed against a campus-filtered budget.If you have any further questions about setting up or using budget filters, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support team!