Aid & Distribution
Answers on assistance programs in Muin — taking aid requests, reviewing and approving them fairly, scheduling distributions, and issuing disbursements or gift cards.
15 questions
Can I approve an aid request and pay it in one step?
Yes. In the review cockpit, **Approve & disburse…** does both. 1. Go to **Nonprofit** > **Aid & Assistance** > **Review Queue** and open a request 2. In **Review decision**, leave **Approved amount** blank to approve the full requested amount, or enter a lower number to approve part of it. Add a **Note** 3. Click **Approve & disburse…** One dialog covers the payout: **Payout method**, **Approved amount**, a **Gift-card reference** if you are handing over a card, **Charge to grant**, an **Allowability override reason** for the case where grant rules block it and you are overriding deliberately, and **Notify the recipient** on their best channel: WhatsApp, email or SMS. If you would rather decide now and pay later, use **Record decision only**.
How do I stop one household getting aid more often than my policy allows?
Write a fairness policy. Muin enforces it at intake and at approval, so a request that would exceed a cap is caught before anybody promises anything. 1. Go to **Nonprofit** > **Aid & Assistance** > **Fairness Policies** 2. Click **New policy** and pick the **Assistance class** it governs 3. Choose the **Period** (week, month, quarter, year) and whether it **Applies to** a household or a person 4. Set **Max amount per period**, **Max requests per period**, or both. Blank means no cap of that kind 5. Optionally set **Typical amount**: it is advisory, and it grounds the AI reviewer so recommendations match what you actually give Tick **Require eligibility screening before approval** if a household must be screened first. Untick **Policy active** to pause enforcement without deleting the policy; deleting it makes that class unrestricted.
I paid out the wrong amount. How do I undo it?
Void it rather than editing it. On **Nonprofit** > **Aid & Assistance** > **Disbursements**, click **Void** on the row. Voiding does four things, and the dialog says so before you confirm: - A cash method restores the fund - The general-ledger entry is reversed - An in-kind payout returns the relieved stock - The request reopens, so it can be disbursed again A **Reason** is required. Write what was actually wrong: it is the audit trail. Voiding cannot be undone, but the reopened request can simply be disbursed correctly.
How do gift cards work for assistance?
Muin tracks the cards internally, who got which card, for how much, and what happened to it. It does not buy the cards for you. Issue one on **Nonprofit** > **Aid & Assistance** > **Gift Cards** with **Issue gift card**: **Recipient**, **Fund** and **Card value**, plus an optional **External reference** for the card or batch number printed on the card itself. A card also appears here when you pick the gift-card method on an **Approve & disburse**, so you never issue it twice. The lifecycle is **Issued** → **Activated** → **Redeemed**, with **Void** available until it is redeemed. Redeemed and void are end states. Voiding asks for a reason.
A household is just over the income line but I want to help them. What do I do?
Record an override. Do it on the record rather than quietly, because an undocumented exception is the one an auditor asks about. 1. Go to **Nonprofit** > **Distribution** > **Eligibility** and run the screening 2. When the result comes back **Ineligible**, write the **Override reason** 3. Click **Override with Reason** and confirm Muin states plainly what you are doing: your name and your reason are stored on the screening record permanently and will appear in any compliance or funder audit, and the original determination is kept alongside it. The result then reads **Overridden** rather than hiding the original answer.
Where are the federal poverty guidelines, and can I change them?
**Nonprofit** > **Distribution** > **Poverty Guidelines**. Muin ships the current HHS poverty guidelines for household sizes 1 through 12: the table for the 48 contiguous states and DC, and the two separate HHS tables for the non-contiguous states. 1. Pick the **year** 2. Pick the geography tab: **48 States**, or the tab for either non-contiguous state 3. Edit an income cell directly if your program uses a different threshold 4. Click **Save Changes** **Export CSV** gives you the table for a grant application or board packet. Editing a figure changes every screening run afterwards. This screen is available to US organizations; if you do not see it, the poverty-guideline feature is not enabled for your country.
How do I give approved families a pickup time?
**Nonprofit** > **Aid & Assistance** > **Scheduling** runs on the same pickup engine the distribution events use, so you are not maintaining a second calendar. 1. Choose a **Pickup event** at the top. Every slot and appointment on the page is scoped to it 2. Generate the slots: interval, capacity per slot, and the window they cover 3. Book approved households into slots Not everyone will book themselves. The book-on-behalf panel lets you place an approved request into a slot yourself, which is how you handle the phone call and the person at your desk. If the selector says there are no distribution events yet, create one under **Distribution** first. Scheduling attaches to an event; it does not invent one.
How much zakat have we received and how much have we given out?
**Nonprofit** > **Aid & Assistance** > **Stewardship**. Set **Period** to **This quarter**, **Year to date** or **Last 12 months**, and three figures sit at the top: **Total disbursed**, **Zakat received** and **Zakat undistributed**. Below that, a by-category table shows where assistance went, and a by-fund table shows each fund's **Balance**, **Monthly burn**, **Runway** and the date it **Depletes** at the current rate. A fund with no recent outflow shows **No active burn** rather than a misleading runway. **Export CSV** and **Export PDF** give you the report for a board packet or a funder. One caution: charge zakat payouts to the zakat fund. If you pay zakat-funded help out of a general fund, the in-versus-out reconciliation will overstate what is undistributed.
The same family collected twice in one day. How do I stop that?
Set a distribution limit. **Nonprofit** > **Distribution** > **Distribution Limits** has built-in rules you can tighten, plus your own via **Add Limit**. Pick a **Limit Type**: same-event duplicate, same-day duplicate, family per-event cap, visits per period, weight per period, items per visit, or cooldown days, then set the maximum, whether it **Applies To** a person or a household, and the **Enforcement**: - **Block** refuses the distribution at the desk. An operator cannot talk past it - **Warn** lets them through and records that they were warned **Warning Threshold %** decides how close to the limit a household gets before the desk is warned. It defaults to 80. For the family of nine whose needs genuinely exceed the cap, add a household override rather than loosening the rule for everybody. And if the same person is on your rolls twice, merge the duplicates on the **Neighbours** tab, or each copy stays under the cap on its own.
A recipient's certification expired. Do we have to turn them away?
No. Expiry is a reminder to renew, never a turn-away. Muin surfaces the lapse so the paperwork gets done, not so the desk refuses somebody. **Nonprofit** > **Distribution** > **Recipients** opens the **Services** console, and its **Certifications** tab separates the two cases: people who have never been certified, and people whose certification has run out. Work the list and re-certify as you can. The same console's **Neighbours** tab is where you add a walk-in, import a list, merge duplicates, and link people into a household so limits and history apply to the household rather than to one name.
Why does a DRAFT banner show on my attestation settings?
Because at least one program is still using Muin's starter attestation copy, which has not been reviewed by your counsel. The banner is deliberate: a compliance statement nobody reviewed is a liability. To clear it, on **Nonprofit** > **Distribution** > **Attestation Settings**: 1. Open each program card: **TEFAP**, **CSFP** and **General** 2. Set the **Version label**. It is recorded on each certification, so bump it when the wording changes 3. Edit the statement in each language you serve. Muin ships fields for English, Spanish, Arabic, Urdu and Pashto, with right-to-left rendering where needed 4. Untick **Draft** once your counsel has reviewed it 5. Click **Save attestation copy** Changing the wording does not alter past certifications. They keep the version they were signed under, which is what an auditor matches a signature against.
Who has to count the cash, and when does it become a contribution?
At least two people count it. Muin will not create a session with one counter, and both names appear on it as **Counted by**. The money becomes recorded contributions only at the last step. The stages are: 1. **Counted**: two people counted it; awaiting approval 2. **In Transit**: approved, on its way to the bank 3. **Deposited**: at the bank, awaiting reconciliation 4. **Reconciled**: matched, and a contribution is recorded for each envelope **Confirm reconciliation** stays disabled until a matching bank deposit is linked. Once the bank feed shows the deposit it links automatically. You are not meant to confirm before the bank agrees with you. Who may approve follows **Settings** > **Approvals** > cash counts, not a fixed rule, so a small organization can be set up for one approver and a larger one for two.
The counted total does not match the deposit slip. What do I do?
This is exactly the case the process exists for, and the answer depends on which number you doubt. - **Return for recount** if you think the count was wrong. The session goes back to **Counted** and any approval is cleared - **Flag discrepancy** if the money is genuinely missing. This cancels the session, no contributions are recorded, and a reason is required so there is an audit trail Do not reconcile a total you do not believe. Reconciling records a contribution for each envelope and cannot be undone. Flagging also cannot be undone. If you flag by mistake, create a new session from a fresh count; the flagged one stays on the record with your reason.
Where do I get the TEFAP monthly report and the signature audit?
**Nonprofit** > **Distribution** > **Food Pantry Reports**, which has four tabs: - **Intake / Outflow**: items received against pounds distributed, with persons and households served - **TEFAP Monthly**: the monthly federal report, with gender, ethnicity and race breakdowns - **Signature Audit**: which certifications and per-serve records have a signature, and whether it verifies - **Non-fulfillment**: visits where somebody did not get what they came for **Export CSV** is on every tab. **Export PDF** is on **Signature Audit** and **Non-fulfillment**, the two an auditor asks to be handed. If TEFAP demographics come back mostly blank, they were not collected at intake. Add them to your intake form; the report can only summarize what was captured.
How many people did we serve last quarter, and what was it worth?
Two screens, depending on whether you want a figure or a shape. **Nonprofit** > **Distribution** > **Distribution Reports** is the plain-numbers screen. Set **From** and **To**, or use **Today** / **This Week** / **This Month**, narrow by **Fund** and **Program**, and read five tiles: **Total Events**, **Recipients Served**, **Total Value Distributed**, **Avg Value / Recipient** and **Total Weight**. **Nonprofit** > **Distribution** > **Distribution Impact** gives you records by program and by assistance program as charts, where every number drills into the records behind it. One thing to know: Distribution Reports counts **completed** events only. An event left open shows nowhere, which is the usual reason a total looks lower than you expected.
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