Handling An Accidental Charge

Using the a church credit card by mistake for a personal purchase is a fairly common situation.  Whether you grabbed the wrong card from your wallet or didn't realize which card was queued up for an online purchase, there are a few important steps to solving this issue.

1. Because this purchase did take place and therefore the transactions did process on your church credit card, you will need to submit these transactions via Zoho.  It's important to keep in mind that ALL transactions that have taken place on your church credit card must be submitted--even those that take place on accident.
2. As you categorize these transactions you will want to make sure you categorize all personal charges to the same category.  The category you choose is not incredibly important however some churches do have a special category for this type of situation.  If you are unsure which category to choose, please talk to the leadership at your church.
3. You will now need to reimburse the church for your personal purchases.  A couple of things to keep in mind:
   1. Do NOT under any circumstances reimburse the church by using the churches giving system.  That will provide you a giving credit which would be an improper and, as a result, illegal use of the giving system.  
   2. You will likely need to write a check for your reimbursement to the church.  Some churches do have other options however to learn if you have another option available to you please ask the leadership of your church directly.
   3. This step is incredibly important--as you reimburse the church, someone at the church will need to submit a deposit itemization to myXP through the support form for you church.  It is very important that you inform that person which category the personal expenses were submitted under--the deposit itemization must be submitted with the same category to effectively balance out the personal expense and also to record in the bookkeeping software that you have reimbursed the church.

Please note, these are the same steps to follow if you used a personal card to make a church purchase, had the charge refunded, and now need to refund the church. The only variable is that you may need to look up the original charge to be certain that you place the refund in the same category as the purchase to ensure they offset each other.