Setting Up Giving & Fund Tracking
Connect your giving sources, track funds individually, and turn generosity data into meaningful insights for your leadership team.
Why Track Giving in Vitals?
Giving is one of the clearest indicators of congregational health and engagement. When people give consistently, it's usually a sign that they're connected, bought in, and growing in their faith. When giving drops, it's often an early signal that something deeper is shifting — even before you see it in attendance numbers.
Vitals doesn't just store your giving numbers — it puts them in context alongside attendance, online engagement, and other metrics so you can see the full picture of your church's health.
What giving data helps you answer
Are we on track to meet our annual budget?
Is online giving growing relative to in-person giving?
How does our per-capita giving compare month to month?
Are special campaigns (building fund, missions) gaining momentum or stalling?
Setting Up Giving Sources
Most churches receive giving through multiple channels — the offering plate on Sunday, online giving through your website, text-to-give, and maybe a giving kiosk in the lobby. Vitals can pull data from all of these sources into a single, unified view.
There are two ways to get giving data into Vitals:
Automatic via integration
Connect Planning Center Giving or Pushpay and giving data syncs automatically each week. This is the easiest option and eliminates manual data entry entirely.
Manual entry
Enter your giving totals directly into Vitals each week. Great for churches without a supported integration or those that want to include cash/check totals that aren't in their online giving platform.
Pro tip: Even if you use an integration for online giving, you may want to manually add your cash/check offering totals to get a complete picture. Vitals combines integrated and manual data into a single total.
Fund Tracking
Track your general fund, building fund, missions fund, and any special campaigns separately. This lets you see not just how much your church gave, but where the money is going — which is often the more important question for leadership.
- 1Go to Settings → Giving → Funds.
- 2Click "Add Fund" and enter a name (e.g., "Missions Fund" or "Building Campaign 2026").
- 3Choose whether this fund is ongoing (like a general fund) or time-bound (like a capital campaign with a start and end date).
- 4If you use an integration, map the fund to the corresponding fund in Planning Center or Pushpay so data syncs automatically.
- 5Click Save. The fund now appears in your giving breakdown on the dashboard.
Example: Grace Church's fund setup
Grace Church tracks three funds: General, Missions, and Building. Their total giving last week was $18,500 — $12,000 general, $4,000 missions, $2,500 building. On their Vitals dashboard, they can see each fund's trend independently and how the total compares to the same week last year.
General Fund
$12,000
+4% vs last year
Missions
$4,000
+12% vs last year
Building
$2,500
New this year
You can archive a fund when a campaign ends. Archived funds keep their historical data but no longer appear in the active giving entry form.
The “Total Giving” metric on your dashboard is the sum of all active funds. You don't need to calculate it manually.
Integration with Planning Center & Pushpay
If your church uses Planning Center Giving or Pushpay, connecting them to Vitals is the fastest way to get accurate, hands-off giving data every week.
Planning Center Giving
- 1.Go to Settings → Integrations → Planning Center.
- 2.If you haven't already connected Planning Center, click "Connect" and authorize Vitals.
- 3.Once connected, toggle on "Sync Giving Data" under the giving section.
- 4.Map your Planning Center funds to the corresponding Vitals funds (or let Vitals auto-create them).
- 5.Giving data will sync weekly. You’ll see it on your dashboard by Monday morning.
Pushpay
- 1.Go to Settings → Integrations → Pushpay.
- 2.Click "Connect Pushpay" and sign in with your Pushpay admin credentials.
- 3.Select which Pushpay merchant account to sync (if you have multiple).
- 4.Map funds and enable weekly sync.
- 5.Pushpay data includes online, app, and text-to-give transactions automatically.
Integration data syncs automatically each week. If a donation is added or adjusted after the initial sync, Vitals picks it up on the next sync cycle.
You can always manually override a synced giving total if you need to include cash/check amounts that aren't in your online platform.
Manual Giving Entry
If your church doesn't use Planning Center Giving or Pushpay — or if you want to add cash and check totals alongside your digital giving — you can enter giving data manually each week.
- 1Open the Vitals mobile app or go to the Enter Data page on the web dashboard.
- 2Select the week (Sunday date) you’re entering data for.
- 3Scroll to the giving section. You’ll see a field for each active fund.
- 4Enter the total for each fund. If you only track total giving, just fill in the Total Giving field.
- 5Tap Save. Your giving data is now reflected on the dashboard and in reports.
Tips
Enter giving data by Tuesday for the best experience — the weekly report generates on Monday, but you can backfill data for past weeks any time.
The Vitals mobile app makes it easy to enter giving right after you finish counting on Sunday. Hand it off to your finance volunteer and they can enter it in 30 seconds.
Understanding Giving Metrics
Vitals tracks several giving-related metrics to help you understand not just how much your church is giving, but the patterns behind it.
Total Giving
The sum of all funds for the week. This is your top-line giving number and the one most leadership teams track first.
Online Giving
Giving that came through digital channels — your website, app, text-to-give, or kiosk. This metric is especially useful for tracking the shift from cash to digital giving over time.
Online vs. In-Person
See the split between digital and physical giving. Many churches are surprised to find that 60–80% of their giving now comes through online channels.
Per-Capita Giving
Total giving divided by attendance. This is one of the most revealing metrics — it shows whether giving growth is keeping pace with attendance growth, or if you're growing in bodies but not in generosity.
Real-world example: Crossroads Church saw total giving grow 8% year over year, but per-capita giving actually dropped 3% because attendance grew 11%. Without tracking per-capita giving, they would have missed that their generosity culture wasn't keeping pace with their growth.
Tips for Healthy Giving Tracking
Giving data can be noisy week to week. Here's how to get the most out of it without driving yourself crazy.
Look at 4-week rolling averages, not individual weeks
Don't panic about week-to-week giving fluctuations. A single large gift or a holiday weekend can swing your numbers dramatically. The 4-week rolling average smooths out the noise and shows the real trend.
Compare year-over-year, not just week-over-week
Giving has strong seasonal patterns. January is usually high (New Year's resolutions), summer dips (vacations), and December spikes (year-end generosity). Comparing to the same period last year gives you a much more accurate read.
Track online giving percentage over time
The shift to digital giving is accelerating. If your online giving percentage is growing, that's usually a good sign — online givers tend to be more consistent because many set up recurring gifts.
Use per-capita giving as your health check
Total giving going up is great, but per-capita giving is the real indicator of generosity culture. If attendance doubles but giving stays flat, you have a discipleship opportunity.
Share giving wins with your congregation
When a missions fund hits its goal or a building campaign reaches a milestone, celebrate it publicly. Vitals makes it easy to pull the numbers you need for those moments.
Quick reference: what's normal?
A 10–20% week-to-week fluctuation in giving is completely normal for most churches.
Summer giving typically drops 10–15% compared to spring. Plan for this — don't react to it.
December giving can represent 15–25% of your annual total. A strong December doesn't mean January will be strong too — prepare for the dip.
If your 4-week rolling average declines for 6+ consecutive weeks outside of summer, that's worth a deeper conversation with your leadership team.
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Still have questions? Email us at support@vitals.church — we usually reply within a few hours.