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Invoices, receipts, and refunds

These three pages handle the documents that flow between the parish and the requester after a stipend is offered. Invoices go out when payment is owed. Receipts go out when payment lands. Refunds go out when something needs to be returned. All three feed the same parish ledger, so the totals on your reports always reconcile back to the source documents shown here.

The three pages at a glance​

Navigate to Admin Dashboard → Finance and pick the relevant tab in the sidebar:

  • Invoices — outstanding and paid stipend summary invoices, with PDF download, reminder emails, and void support.
  • Receipts — every receipt issued for a payment, searchable by receipt number, requester, or payment method, with email, PDF download, and item-level refund actions.
  • Refunds — one center for actionable refund problems and completed refund or manual-reversal history across receipts, Mass intentions, Online Forms, memorials, Gregorian Masses, Mass cards, baptism payments, invoices, and manual payments.

A live count next to Refunds in the sidebar shows how many items currently need attention. Clicking the tab refreshes the count.

Invoices​

The Invoices page is where you see the stipend summary invoices the parish has sent — typically one invoice grouping several Mass intentions for the same requester — and where you act on the ones that are still outstanding.

Browsing the invoice list​

Each row shows the invoice number, status, requester, issue date, due date, total, and balance due. The status badge is one of:

  • Draft — saved but not yet issued.
  • Open — issued and awaiting full payment.
  • Partially Paid — partially paid; balance due is still positive.
  • Paid — paid in full.
  • Void — cancelled and excluded from outstanding totals.

Use the search box to look up by requester name, email, or invoice number. The status dropdown filters the list to one status at a time.

Where invoices are generated

Invoices are created from the Payments view of the Mass intentions overview — select unpaid intentions for a single requester, click Payment Options, and choose the stipend summary invoice action. The Invoices page here is for managing what has already been generated.

Sending and reissuing an invoice​

From the actions menu on any row:

  1. View opens the invoice viewer with the full line-item breakdown, requester information, and payment status.
  2. Send reminder opens an email composer pre-populated with the requester's address. Use this when an invoice is overdue. Reminders are only available on Open and Partially Paid invoices that still have a balance due.
  3. Download PDF generates the printable invoice PDF, named stipend-summary-INV-NNNN.pdf. Hand this to the requester at the office, attach it to email, or keep it for records.
  4. Copy link copies the public invoice URL to your clipboard. The link works without a login — the requester can open it, see the full invoice, and pay online if Stripe is configured. Multi-tenant safety: the link includes the parish identifier, so it cannot be confused with another parish's invoice.
  5. Void invoice is available only on Draft and Open invoices that have not yet received any payment. Voiding requires a reason, which is stored in the audit trail for future readers.

Recording payment​

Payments against an invoice are recorded from the Payments view of the Mass Intentions page or directly from the public invoice link. The Invoices page reflects whatever payment has been recorded — when an invoice is fully paid, its status flips to Paid and the receipt for the payment becomes available on the Receipts tab.

When an intention includes a paid Mass card, the invoice shows a separate Mass Card — Pickup/Mail line immediately after its stipend line. The fee is a price snapshot: changing parish card settings or fulfillment status later does not change an existing invoice. Remove and re-add the parent on a draft, or void and reissue an issued invoice, when a price correction is required.

Receipts​

The Receipts page is the system of record for every payment the parish has accepted, whether it came in as cash in the collection plate, a check at the office, a bank transfer, or a Stripe credit-card payment.

Filtering and searching receipts​

The page has four filters at the top:

  • Search — by receipt number, requester name, or email.
  • Payment Method — All, Credit card, Cash, Check, Bank transfer, or Other.
  • Review Status — All receipts, or Needs review only to focus on receipts the system flagged for follow-up (for example, a partially refunded receipt where the metadata could not be reconciled cleanly).
  • Date Range — a calendar picker that limits the list to issue dates inside the range.

Click Search to apply the filters or Clear Filters to reset to defaults. A "N receipt(s) need review" badge above the results table tells you at a glance how many items are flagged.

What each row shows​

The receipt list shows receipt number, issue date, requester, payment method, total amount, and a status group:

  • Valid (green) or Voided (red) — whether the receipt is currently active.
  • Needs review (amber) — informational badge for receipts the system has flagged.

Each row's actions column packs four icons:

  • Eye — open the full receipt viewer with line-item breakdown.
  • Download — download a PDF copy of the receipt for the parishioner or for parish records.
  • Mail — re-email the receipt to the requester. Only available when an email is on file. Useful when a parishioner says they never received it or lost the original.
  • Ban — issue a refund. The icon's tooltip changes based on payment method: Refund to Card for Stripe payments, or Cancel Payment Record for cash, check, or bank-transfer payments. Hidden when the receipt is already voided or when there is nothing left to refund.

Reissuing a lost receipt​

When a parishioner asks for a copy of a receipt they cannot find:

  1. Search by their name or email.
  2. Click the eye icon to confirm the right receipt.
  3. Click the download icon to save the PDF, or click the mail icon to email the receipt directly to them.

Both actions leave a record in the audit trail showing who reissued it and when.

Item-level refunds from a receipt​

The receipt viewer supports refunding individual line items rather than the whole receipt at once. This is useful when one Mass on a multi-Mass receipt needs to be cancelled but the others should stand. Open the receipt, select the items to refund, enter a refund reason between 10 and 500 characters, and confirm. Stripe refunds the cards automatically. For cash, check, bank-transfer, or other manual payments, first return the money outside Sacramentum and then explicitly confirm that the funds were returned before the ledger reversal can be recorded.

For a shared checkout, cancelling one primary item refunds only that item and its paired Mass-card fee; the other intentions and any checkout-level additional offering or processing-fee coverage remain on the active receipt. When the parish rejects or cancels the final primary item, Sacramentum refunds the entire remaining receipt balance, including additional offering and processing-fee coverage, and reverses those checkout-level amounts through 3100 Additional Offerings. A receipt is marked void only after its complete paid amount has been refunded.

Mass-card fees appear as their own refundable line and reverse 4200 Mass Card Fees. Refunding only the card fee does not mark the stipend unpaid or change whether the physical card is prepared, picked up, or mailed. A pending card fee follows a parent-intention refund automatically; an already prepared or delivered card requires an explicit confirmation before its fee is refunded.

Paid Online Forms also expose Refund payments from the submission detail panel. This returns each selected payment's full remaining refundable amount and reverses Online Form Payments account 4400. It deliberately does not withdraw or void the registration. Use Withdraw registration separately when participation should end; if money remains retained, the invoice and receipt remain intact for follow-up.

Refunds​

The Refunds page is a unified, parish-scoped center with two views. It combines refund activity from every supported payment source without changing where new refunds begin: use the receipt, Mass-intention, or Online Form screen to initiate a new refund, then use this center to follow the result and resolve existing manual work.

Needs attention​

Needs attention opens by default and has no date cutoff. Its sidebar badge counts only records that genuinely require work:

  • Not requested — a rejected paid request still needs a refund decision.
  • Manual required — cash, check, or bank-transfer funds must be returned outside Sacramentum before the ledger reversal can be recorded.
  • Failed — the payment provider rejected the attempt or the refund request failed.
  • Needs review — the payment was returned, but related financial cleanup could not be completed safely.

Successful and processing refunds do not increase the badge. Neither does an informational Online Form warning that a registration remains active after its payment was refunded.

History​

History shows successful refunds, processing activity, and manual reversals. It defaults to the last 30 days in the parish timezone; choose a custom range or All time when researching older activity. Search by payer, receipt, provider reference, or reason, and filter by source, status, or payment method.

A refund returns money associated with a payment. A manual reversal records a returned cash, check, bank-transfer, or other offline payment and its ledger correction. Both are preserved as financial history; neither is deleted from the audit trail.

Processing a manual refund​

When a row shows Manual Required, Failed, or Needs Action:

  1. Hand the requester their refund offline — cash from the petty cash drawer, a parish check, a bank transfer, or whatever your normal refund path is.
  2. Click Mark as Refunded on the row in Sacramentum.
  3. In the dialog, choose the Refund Account that the money came out of:
    • Operating Account (1000) — the parish bank account, for refunds you wrote a check against or wired from the bank.
    • Undeposited Funds (1100) — for cash refunds drawn from the till before deposit.
  4. Add Refund Notes explaining the situation — for example, "Returned $25 cash on 2026-04-15" or "Issued check #1492 from operating account."
  5. Click Mark Refunded to post the refund to the ledger.

The refund is recorded against the right account, the receipt is updated, and the row moves from Needs attention to History. The audit trail captures who marked it, when, and from which account.

warning

Always record offline refunds in Sacramentum the same day you issue them. The ledger does not learn about cash, checks, or bank transfers automatically — leaving a refund unmarked means your reports overstate liabilities and understate cash outflows. The Refund Center is the single place where the parish ledger and the real world get reconciled for non-Stripe refunds.

Stripe refunds you do not need to process​

Most Stripe refunds happen automatically. When a parishioner cancels an intention, an admin rejects a request, or someone refunds a receipt from the Receipts page, Sacramentum calls Stripe and records the result in History. The record appears in Needs attention only when the attempt fails or local cleanup needs review.

Payment refund versus registration withdrawal​

Refunding an Online Form payment does not withdraw the submission or any linked registration. When the payment is refunded but registration remains active, the center shows Payment refunded · Registration still active and offers Open submission. Decide separately whether the person should remain registered; Sacramentum never withdraws them automatically, and the warning does not increase the Refunds badge.

Audit trail​

Completed refund history is recorded on the receipt, with links back to the source record when available. Failed or processing attempts are also attached to the receipt when one exists. Legacy manual reversals remain visible as read-only compatibility rows. Nothing in the center is deletable; refunds and reversals create new history instead of erasing the original payment.

What's next​

  • Reports — see refunds, receipts, and outstanding invoices rolled up across the period
  • Payouts — settle the priest stipend obligations that paid receipts create
  • Pending approvals — the rejection workflow that sends most refunds into this queue