Guest Blog: Speaking the Language | Reconciling Fundraising and Accounting (part 2 of 2)

This is the second of two posts by Pam Dechert, Senior eTapestry Consultant, about reconciling your fundraising and accounting solutions. The first half of this post can be found here. 

It’s common for accounting and fund development to not clearly understand what the each other needs and how they operate. Adding to the confusion is that it is not uncommon for accounting to be outsourced or managed by a part-time position. Finally, as if there weren’t enough challenges facing a collaborative accounting/fundraising existence; add in that each department is using a different database to manage their work.

Given all of this, some common challenges faced by eTapestry customers are:

• 
  
• Finance and fundraising reports don’t match
  
• Donor designations are more specific in one database than the other
  
• Pledges are either not recorded or are constantly written off
  
• Timing of cash entries make bank reconciliations difficult
  
• Fundraising and finance teams don’t talk to each other
  

So how do we overcome these challenges?
Here are a few simple tips:

1. Let each software solution do its job!
As an organization, determine what role each system should play. Don’t report development information out of your accounting system or try to manage expenses out of eTapestry. Last week I outlined the different needs of fund development and finance. Based on these lists, it’s pretty clear that software that serves finance’s needs is not also going to serve fund development’s needs and vice versa.

2. Understand common reports.
Both your accounting software and eTapestry have standard reports built in to help you effectively pull information from your databases. For example, your accounting software should generate a statement of activities, financial position, budget to actual, expenses to reimbursable grants, and receipt and spending of restricted gifts. On the other hand, your eTapestry database can generate donor acknowledgement, top donor reports, pledge reminders, lapsed and new donor reports, board member giving, etc.

3. Define what accounting/fundraising integration looks like.
At the most basic level, syncing your accounting and fundraising teams means understanding how new gifts are communicated, determining how to match funds listed in eTapestry with income reported in the general ledger, and deciding how frequently fund development and accounting should reconcile.

For more help with accounting integration, check out the following Knowledgebase documents (you may need your Blackbaud.com login information):

Accounting exports from eTapestry
eTapestry Standard Exports
eTapestry Database Management System Guide