Collections Procedures

Program Directors will decide how many payments, how much will be due, and when to schedule payments before the program begins on the Event Set Up form. These dates and payment fees will then determine the balances due on events.reliant.org under each participant. The event finance administrator will be able to export data from events.reliant.org to know what participant has made payment and who still owes their event fees. (See Event Registration Site Instructions) Only authorized missionaries, that are familiar with the Collections Policies and Procedures should handle the collection of any monies. The Program Director and the person delegated responsibility as Event Finance Administrator (in the Event Set Up document) are ultimately responsible for ensuring these policies and procedures are followed.

Payments by the Participants

See also Event Fee Payments Made by Reliant Employee for events (Please have all missionaries/interns attending your event read how to pay for the event.) The event director will need to tell Reliant the fees for each missionary/intern to be added to the event (or have the participant begin the event registration and save before paying) before the missionary/intern can make a payment.

These instructions are given to the participant in their acceptance email:

To make your program deposit and remaining fee payments please follow these steps below:

Please use this direct link to make your event payments. It will ask you to create a user name and password before you can begin making the payments.

If you have any issues with that direct link, you can go to events.reliant.org and at the bottom of the HOME tab, you will see a dropdown for EVENTS. Your specific event will be listed there.

Payments need to be made directly by you (or by a parent/guardian or the local church)
If a parent/guardian is making the payment and wants to pay with a credit card you can share your log-in information to the website for them to pay on your behalf or they will need to call Reliant events department (407-490-0425).
If you choose to mail your payment, we still need you to go and create a username and password on the event payment site and begin your registration (you can then select save for later when you get to the payment page rather than paying) so that we can credit your payment to your name listed on the event registration when it is received in the mail. You may send a check or money order to Reliant (cash will not be accepted). But, you will need to include the words event payment as well as the fund number for your specific trip on the memo line (or on a note included in the envelope). Your specific mission trip fund number is (xxxx). If a parent/guardian is sending the check, they will also need to include the name of the participant they are paying the fee for. Again, because this payment is not tax-deductible, the payment should only be made by you (or by your parent/guardian or local church).

Event fees are paid on the online payment site and calculated on the date they are paid (not the date they being filling out their application). Fees that change amounts on specific dates will change to the next fee amount at midnight eastern standard time on the day written on the event set up form.

Participants can not make payments for their fees until they have been accepted into the program. In order for your participant to be accepted and able to make a payment or to participate in any event activities your participant will need to have already completed the medical and liability forms.

Any changes to specific participant fees (ex. refunds, adding late fees, etc.) can only be approved by the director or finance administrator.

Acceptable forms of payments by the participants.

Credit card payment online at events.reliant.org
Credit card payment over phone through Gift Service dept., at the Reliant office
Personal check written to Reliant (Atten: Event Payment) from the participant with the event fund number in the memo line
Money order from the participant
Online banking- send your e-check to Reliant: Event Payment at 11002 Lake Hart Dr. Suite 100, Orlando, FL 32832. Please make sure that you write the name of your summer program and your name in the memo line of the check. And notify gift.services@reliant.org to let them know to look for it.

OR...

Personal check written to Reliant from parent with same last name as the participant (Reliant will credit the check to the participant’s record, not the parent’s)
Check from the participant’s church (See Event Fee Payments Made By Church) clearly stating whom payment is for. If payment is for multiple people there must be a note included with the check that states each participant’s name and the amount to credit each participant.
See also Event Fund Transfer Requests for churches within Reliant that have a Reliant department fund that want to make a payment for a participant's event fee.

If your event is choosing to collect money on site for participant event fee payments please follow the instructions below.

All money collected onsite should be documented on the Ledger Sheet.

If you have access on events.reliant.org (review Event Registration Site Instructions) to export the data for each student into an excel file to see the balances due for each collection date. It also may be helpful to keep a file on your own to keep track of collection payments given by students. But, you will still need to access events.reliant.org to view participant payments made by by credit card and e-check.

When sending in a group of checks after a collection, the checks must be accompanied by the ledger sheet. Or, if you are using a google doc for the ledger, please attach a note saying the checks are for event payment for your specific event (for example: Estes Park LT). The total on the ledger MUST equal the total amount of checks/money orders sent in and must be filled out completely. If this is not the case it will be sent back to the summer program.
Any special instructions for a check or money order need to be attached to that check or money order. For example, if a church sends a check for multiple participants be sure that attached to the check is a list of the participants and the amount to credit each participant.
Please send another separate ledger sheet for any checks and income earned for something other than the payments towards each participant fees. (ex. t-shirt sales, etc.)
All checks received onsite should be mailed to the Reliant office promptly, within 1 business day of receiving them. This will help to avoid problems of checks being returned to Reliant marked non sufficient funds as well as help with the time delay. The turn around time between each collection date is typically only a few weeks and we want to make sure we have time to add each payment to the event registration before the next payment is due to make sure that payments are up to date on collection nights.
You may want to provide an immediate "receipt" for the participant at the time you receive a check from a participant. If you choose to provide an immediate receipt at the time you receive a check, the receipt should include:

- Participant’s Name
- Issuing Church/Organization/Ministry (IE. New Life Church or GCMC)
- Issuing Church/Organization Contact Information
- Event Name and/or Description
- Payment Amount and Method of Payment
- Check # or Money Order #
- Date payment is received
- Printed Name of Collections Person
- Signature of Collections Person

Personal check guidelines

Make sure name and address of account holder are printed legibly on the check (many students open new accounts and use starter checks with no name or address on them, and we can’t read the signature)
ALL checks must be clearly marked with the participants name that it should be credited to.
You can NOT write a check that was written to you over to Reliant (payable to Reliant). Reliant can only receive checks written directly to them for auditing purposes.
We would strongly prefer only one check per participant collection payment.

Ensure that each check or money order received has the following information printed legibly on it:
- Participant’s name – printed legibly
- Address
- Amount – numeric amount should match written amount
- Check or money order number associated with the payment. (please assign unique numbers to starter checks, write it on the check and in the ledger sheet)
- Date
- Signature
Students raising financial support on their own must have their donors make their checks payable to the student, not to Reliant, and donor checks must be given directly to the student. See Why are donations towards domestic event program fees not tax deductible? for details.
The program participant will always need to pay Reliant with a check or money order written from the participant or from a parent with the same last name
All other checks received by the participants from the donors need to be deposited into the participant's account and a new check must be written to Reliant from the participant. We will not allow students to sign over to Reliant a donor’s check written to them (PAY TO THE ORDER OF RELIANT on the back) because that check from the donor or from their work to the participant is not tax deductible.
If a student receives a check from a supporter/donor written directly to Reliant they will need to return the check to the donor and ask them to rewrite the check payable to the student.
We will also NOT allow a student to sign over their paycheck to Reliant. (*In the past this was allowed, but due to new auditing rules we can no longer accept any checks (including paychecks) that have not be written out directly to Reliant.

Cash Payments

Never collect cash.
If participants have cash they should go purchase a money order (usually costs between $3-$5 at your local grocery store, convenience store or bank) for the exact amount needed and use that in place of cash.
If cash must be collected from students (as sometimes is the special case of our remote summer programs that lack access to banks and stores) then the administrator will need to go buy a money order on behalf of the student(s) that could only give cash and it should be written to Reliant for that total amount of cash collected from all the individuals. A note must be attached to that money order detailing the names and amounts for each participant. Please mark the memo line as “cash payments received”. These payments will be entered as a cash payment in each of the participants’ records.
How do I fill out the money order? If the participant has purchased it, it should be written to Reliant and signed by the participant. If the LT finance administrator is buying a money order for multiple participant payments, it should be written out to Reliant and then the LT finance administrator should sign the money order and attach the detailed note of names and amounts.
All cash received must be submitted to the Reliant Gift Processing Department using the guidelines written above. Do not deposit it into your petty cash.