Cover the Fees is a great way for donors to pay for the processing fees that are pulled from a transaction. When a donor chooses to cover the fees, their total gift is increased, so the church receives their desired amount.
How to Enable and Set Default Settings for Cover the Fees
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Login to your Tithely account.
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Select Giving from the left-hand menu.
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Select Settings, and then My Giving Form and App.
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On the My Giving Form and App page, scroll down to the Custom Fields area.
Check 'Show Cover the Fees' to enable the feature.
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Then, under the Defaults area, you can set your Cover the Fees default settings:
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When you're done, click save at the bottom of the page.
Cover the Fees Calculations Explained
Because the fees are pulled out of the total transaction, the gift must be increased by an amount that is slightly larger than what the fee would be if the donor did not choose to cover the fees.
Let's use a gift of $75 on a VISA card as an example.
If the donor did not choose to cover the fees, the donor would be charged $75 and the church would receive a deposit for $72.53 ($75 - $2.48 (2.9% + $0.30)).
If the donor did choose to cover the fees, the donor would be charged $77.55 and the church would receive a deposit of $75 ($77.55 - $2.55 (2.9% + $0.30)).
As you can see, by the donor choosing to cover the fees, the fee is slightly higher ($2.55 vs $2.48). If we only added the original fee amount of $2.48 to the donor's gift, the processing fees on the increased gift would result in a net deposit of $74.93 ($77.48 - $2.55 (2.9% + $0.30)).
Formula
If you'd like to calculate what the total transaction might be if a donor chooses to cover the fees on a certain amount, you can use this formula:
(G + $0.30) / (1 - (P / 100)) *rounded up to nearest cent
G is the original gift amount
P is the % for the processing (2.9% for VISA/MC, 3.5% for AMEX, and 1% for ACH)
So for our example above:
($75 + $0.30) / (1 - (2.9 / 100)) = $77.55
Crediting the donor
The fees are pulled from the gift as it is processed, and the net amount after fees is what is deposited into the church's bank. This means that the donor is always credited the amount that they give.
For our example above, the donor would be credited $77.55 if they chose YES to cover the fees. If they chose NO to cover the fees they would be credited $75.