Webinar Recap: Understanding Your Zeffy Payouts — A Simple Process for Monthly Bookkeeping

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Your Zeffy payouts arrive on time, every time — but what happens when your board treasurer asks exactly which dollars went where? In this webinar, nonprofit treasurer David Ducharme walks through the step-by-step process his organization uses to reconcile Zeffy payouts into itemized, chart-of-accounts-ready bookkeeping. The entire process takes about 20–30 minutes per month and uses only Excel or Google Sheets. No APIs, no automation, no technical skills required.

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Meet the Speaker

David Ducharme has served on the board of the Milton Hershey School Alumni Association for the past three years, including the past two as treasurer. Outside his volunteer work, he owns and operates an investment management and financial planning firm. He lives at the intersection of finance systems and real-world nonprofit operations — and the process he shared comes directly from that experience.

"What I'll be sharing today comes directly from that experience. It's a practical, repeatable process that should work in the real world. It works for us." — David Ducharme

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Top 5 Takeaways

• 1. The payout is always right — the question is allocation. Zeffy delivers clean, reliable payouts. The challenge is internal: knowing how to allocate those dollars across funds, programs, and campaigns for your bookkeeping.

• 2. Think of this as "last mile reporting." Like delivery logistics, getting funds most of the way there is the easy part. The last step — breaking down a single payout into line-item detail for your board, bookkeeper, or accounting system — is where this process helps.

• 3. The entire process takes 20–30 minutes per month. Five steps, two Zeffy exports (payout report + itemized payments report), one pivot table, and your reconciliation is done.

• 4. You only need Excel or Google Sheets. No API integrations, no third-party tools, no technical knowledge beyond basic spreadsheet filtering and pivot tables.

• 5. A fund designation feature is coming to Zeffy in March 2026. Donors will soon be able to choose their fund directly on donation forms, and that fund selection will appear in your reports — making this process even simpler.

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Why This Webinar Exists

Zeffy does a great job at what it's designed to do: collect donations, manage registrations, and deliver payouts to your bank account. For many nonprofits — especially early on — the payout summary is more than enough.

But as David explained, the moment things start feeling more complex is usually a good sign. It means your organization is growing.

"Maybe you started with one simple donation form. Then over time, you added a swag store. One t-shirt sale supports a cancer fund, another supports emergency housing. You also allow the additional donation option at checkout. On the payout side, everything arrives correctly as one deposit. But when you look at the summary, those dollars are all grouped together." — David Ducharme

The question shifts from "Did the payout arrive?" to "How do we allocate what came in?"

David framed this as last-mile reporting — borrowing from delivery logistics. Getting donations to your bank account isn't the hard part. It's that final step of breaking one payout into the level of detail your bookkeeper, board, or stakeholders need.

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The 5-Step Reconciliation Process

David walked through each step live, using a real $925 payout from his organization. Here's what the process looks like:

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Step 1: Download Your Payout Report

Navigate to the Finances tab in Zeffy, click on the specific payout, and export the detailed report. This gives you a header-level view: transaction IDs, donor names, and total amounts per transaction — but not the line-item detail.

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Step 2: Download Your Itemized Payments Report

This is where you go deeper. From the Payments tab, export the itemized payments report. David recommended casting a wider date range than you think you need — for example, if you're looking at a January 3rd payout, download from November through January to catch any stragglers.

"Casting a wide net is generally a best practice. This is going to make sure that you've got everything that transacted, including up through the payout date." — David Ducharme

The critical step: when exporting, select the Itemized Payment option (not just the regular payments report). This gives you the line-item breakdown.

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Step 3: Filter the Data

With the itemized report in Excel or Google Sheets, David applied three key filters:

• Payment method: Remove checks, cash, and free items — if Zeffy didn't pay it out, you don't want it in this reconciliation.

• Payout date: Select only the specific payout date you're reconciling.

• Canceled tickets: Remove canceled entries to avoid duplicates (especially common with recurring annual memberships).

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Step 4: Clean and Consolidate

Donation forms and sales forms behave differently in the export. Sales forms have a rate title and item amount. Donation forms may have blank fields because there's no "item being sold."

David's approach: filter for blank rate titles, then copy the campaign title into the rate title column so every row has a name. Do the same for amounts — copy the eligible amount into the item amount column.

For auction forms: The item amount and winning bid amount differ. Filter by the auction campaign name and replace the item amount with the total paid.

The goal: two clean columns — one with item titles, one with dollar amounts — that sum to your payout total.

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Step 5: Build a Pivot Table and Match to Your Chart of Accounts

Select all the clean data, insert a pivot table, and organize by campaign title → rate title → sum of item amounts. This gives you a nested breakdown of every dollar in the payout.

Then, David places a chart-of-accounts table next to the pivot table — listing revenue accounts and fund classifications from the organization's accounting system. He maps each line from the pivot table to the appropriate account, color-coding as he goes to confirm everything's accounted for.

"By the end of it, you'll have something that tells you not only how to input this transaction in your accounting system, but also how much to transfer to each chapter, fund, or program." — David Ducharme

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Handling Edge Cases

David addressed the most common scenarios that trip nonprofits up:

Refunds: Refunds don't appear in the payments report export. Check the payout report for negative amounts, then manually add refund entries to your reconciliation.

Failed payments: These won't appear in the payout at all (since no money moved), so they can be safely ignored. You may see them in the data if you don't filter by payout date, but they won't affect your reconciliation.

Recurring annual memberships: These can create duplicate line items — one canceled, one approved. Filtering out canceled tickets eliminates this issue.

Auction items: The item amount (starting price) and final amount paid (winning bid) differ. Always use the amount actually paid.

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Bonus: Pivot Tables for Donor-Level Reporting

During the Q&A, David demonstrated that the same pivot table process can be used for donor-level analysis. Instead of organizing by campaign title, organize by donor name to see each person's total contributions — useful for IRS compliance testing, identifying disqualified persons, or pulling year-end donor summaries.

"You could create a list of your disqualified persons, or sort by last name. If we know that Bridget is a disqualified person, and we have to meet certain tests annually, we can have a really easy way to identify that." — David Ducharme

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New Feature Alert: Fund Designation (Coming March 2026)

Zeffy announced that they will be developing a fund designation feature for donation forms. When released, donors will be able to select which fund they're supporting directly on the donation form — or organizations can associate a form with a specific fund on the back end.

Fund selections will appear in payment and payout reports, making the reconciliation process described in this webinar even more straightforward.

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Q&A Highlights

Can I see a reference code that matches my bank statement?The detailed payout report includes a transaction ID for each transaction, along with the donor name and amount. While the payments report doesn't include a transaction ID, filtering by payout date and verifying that totals match lets you confirm which transactions belong to which payout.

Can Zeffy create tax receipts for donations paid by check?Yes. Use the "Add a Payment" button on the Payments screen. Enter the payment details, select check or cash as the method, and Zeffy will generate and send a tax receipt — either immediately or as part of the year-end transaction summary.

How do I recognize which event my payment items belong to?If you need campaign-level detail, the payout report shows campaign titles for each transaction. If you need item-level detail (e.g., multiple items within one campaign), the itemized process from this webinar is the way to go.

Can I get contact information from my payout report?Contact details aren't on the payout report, but they are available in the itemized payments report. When exporting, check the boxes for the fields you need — first name, last name, phone, email, custom questions, and more.

What about organizations with multiple bank accounts or chapters?Zeffy pays out to one bank account per organization. This reconciliation process helps you determine exactly how much to transfer to each chapter, youth group, or sub-account on a monthly basis.

What about QuickBooks integration and Zapier automation?David's organization uses Excel's built-in VBA and Power Query features to automate the reconciliation — dropping the two export files into a folder, clicking a "run" button, and getting the summarized output in about 30 seconds. A more advanced option using Zapier to push directly to QuickBooks is also possible. Based on strong audience interest, a follow-up automation webinar is being planned.

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This webinar was hosted by Julia Manoukian, Brand Director at Zeffy. Zeffy is 100% free for nonprofits — no platform fees, no transaction fees, no monthly subscriptions. Create your free account →

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