Finance and accounts
Sacramentum's Finance section is where every dollar that flows through your parish is recorded, traced, and balanced. Stipends from Mass intentions, memorial offerings, processing fees, priest payouts, diocese remittances, and visiting clergy honoraria all post into a double-entry ledger so you always know where the money came from, who is owed what, and what is left in the bank.
The Finance section
Navigate to Admin Dashboard → Finance. In the left sidebar you will find seven tabs grouped under the Finance heading:
- Accounts — the parish chart of accounts and the ledger register for each account.
- Payouts — priest stipend payouts and diocese remittances.
- Visiting Clergy Assignments — engagements where a visiting priest or deacon has been booked to celebrate, plus the help-out fees owed to them.
- Reports — financial summaries and obligations reports.
- Invoices — stipend summary invoices sent to requesters.
- Receipts — receipts issued for payments collected.
- Refunds — refunds requiring administrative action.
The active tab loads in the main panel. Counts and badges update in real time as your team records payments, generates payouts, and processes refunds.
How money flows through Sacramentum
Most parish income in Sacramentum starts with a Mass intention request. The path that money takes from the requester's hand to the priest's pocket — and the records left behind — is the same regardless of whether the offering arrives as cash in an envelope, a check, a bank transfer, or an online Stripe payment.
- A requester offers a stipend. The intention is created, with the offering amount stored on the intention record.
- Payment is recorded. The payment posts to the parish ledger. Cash and checks land in Undeposited Funds (1100); Stripe payments land in Stripe Clearing (1200) and clear to Operating Bank (1000) when Stripe pays out.
- A receipt is issued. Sacramentum generates a numbered receipt for the requester. Receipts are tracked in the Receipts tab.
- The intention is fulfilled. When the Mass is celebrated, the stipend obligation transfers from Stipends Receivable (1300) to the celebrant's individual Priest Payable subaccount under 2000.
- A payout is generated. From the Payouts tab, you draft a payout for a priest covering a date range, including all his fulfilled-but-unpaid Masses and any visiting clergy assignments owed to him.
- The payout is approved and paid. Approving locks the included entries; marking as paid records the check, cash, direct deposit, or wire and clears the priest's payable balance.
The same ledger holds the diocese's share when your parish collects on the diocese's behalf — for example, second collections or per-stole fees that flow through Diocese Payables (2100). Use the Diocese Remittances tab inside Payouts to send those funds upstream.
Every step above produces a journal entry that is visible in the Accounts tab. If you ever need to answer the question "where did this money come from?" or "what is this priest owed?", open the relevant account's register and the entries tell the story.
The chart of accounts at a glance
Sacramentum seeds every parish with a default chart of accounts that supports parish bookkeeping out of the box:
| Code | Account | Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1000 | Operating Bank | Asset | Money in your parish bank account |
| 1100 | Undeposited Funds | Asset | Cash and checks received but not yet deposited at the bank |
| 1200 | Stripe Clearing | Asset | Online payments awaiting transfer from Stripe to your bank |
| 1300 | Stipends Receivable | Asset | Stipends owed for intentions accepted but not yet paid |
| 2000 | Priest Payables | Liability | Total owed to celebrants; one subaccount per priest |
| 2100 | Diocese Payables | Liability | Funds collected on behalf of the diocese |
| 3100 | Additional Offerings | Income | Optional offerings beyond the standard stipend |
| 4100 | Memorial Offering Revenue | Income | Memorial candle and votive offerings |
| 5000 | Processing Fees | Expense | Stripe and other transaction fees |
| 5200–5220 | Visiting clergy expense accounts | Expense | Honoraria, help-out fees, mileage |
For the full mechanics — viewing balances, reconciling against statements, recording manual journal entries, and exporting to external accounting software — see Accounts.
Stipend obligations and priest payouts
The single most important workflow in this section is making sure every priest is paid for the Masses he has celebrated. Sacramentum keeps a running balance of fulfilled-but-unpaid intentions for each priest, then helps you cut a clean payout that covers a defined period.
The Payouts tab moves through three stages — draft, approved, and paid — with full audit trails, void support, and CSV/PDF export at each stage. See Payouts for the step-by-step workflow.
Canon Law requires that every stipend offered for a Mass be applied to that specific intention, and that priests not retain stipends beyond the canonical limit. The combination of Stipends Receivable (1300), Priest Payables (2000), and the Stipend Obligations report makes it straightforward to demonstrate compliance during an episcopal visitation.
Visiting clergy assignments
When a visiting priest, deacon, or chaplain helps out at your parish, the Visiting Clergy Assignments tab tracks the engagement. Each assignment records the date, the Mass or service celebrated, the help-out fee owed (weekend base, weekday base, additional-Mass increments, mileage), and any honorarium agreed to in advance. Unpaid engagements automatically appear on the visiting cleric's next payout, and the totals roll into the 5200-series expense accounts in your ledger.
See Visiting clergy engagements for the full workflow.
Reports
The Reports tab provides snapshots of the parish's financial position drawn directly from the ledger:
- Stipend Obligations — the total owed to each priest, by Mass type, with carry-forward and unfunded breakdowns.
- Period summaries, income and expense by account, and reconciliation status reports.
See Reports for the full list and how to use each one.
Invoices, receipts, and refunds
The remaining three tabs cover the documents that travel between your parish and its requesters:
- Invoices — also called stipend summaries — group several unpaid intentions for the same requester onto one document the requester can pay all at once. See Invoices, receipts, and refunds.
- Receipts — every payment collected through Sacramentum produces a numbered receipt, viewable from this tab and printable or emailable on demand.
- Refunds — when an intention is canceled after payment, Sacramentum guides you through the refund. Stripe payments are refunded automatically through the Stripe API; cash and check payments are recorded manually so the ledger stays balanced. The Refunds tab badges any refund that needs your manual action.
Stripe and payment configuration
Online payment processing is configured separately from this section. To connect Stripe to your parish, set processing fee policies, or configure deposit account behavior, navigate to Settings → Payment Configuration. See Payment configuration.
The connection between Settings and the Finance section is one-way: Stripe credentials live in Settings, and every successful Stripe payment posts a journal entry that you can inspect in the Accounts tab.
What's next
- Accounts — view balances, drill into the ledger, and reconcile bank statements
- Payouts — generate and pay priest stipend payouts
- Visiting clergy engagements — book visiting clergy and track help-out fees
Related articles
- Mass intentions overview — where the stipends that flow through Finance are accepted
- Visiting clergy — set up the people behind visiting clergy assignments
- Managing users — add the priests whose payables this section tracks
- Roles and access — who can see and edit financial records