GIFTS Online: Top 5 Tips For The End Of The Year

Published
The end of the fiscal year is often packed with tight deadlines, lots of final calls and vacation days. Don’t let the time sneak-up on you! Below are 5 quick tips for smooth sailing into the end of 2016. At the end of the post is a Handy Year-End Checklist with room on each line to put in your own notes. Cheers to a new year!

One
Know what you need. Talk to your board, your tax department, and your foundation lawyers to make sure you have a check list of what they will require from you at the end of the year. Common items include: List of grants made that year, Tax Verification Report and a Summary Report.
 
Two
Baseline Reporting. Take stock of what you did this year. Get your baseline numbers. Many people will record these numbers in an excel sheet or even in a tracking chart on the dashboard. Below are examples. 
                     
c3071a2b2ae389064bf6f8313df158d8-huge-eo

ce45dedaa4b47113fb2b5cdbba2c492a-huge-eo

Three
Clean-up. Life can get messy as you are rushing throughout the year to meet deadlines, fulfill requests, send reminders and get checks out the door. The end of the year is a perfect time to pause and do some cleaning. GIFTS Online provides quick ways to figure out what might be out of place so your system can be tidy again. Cleaning up duplicates is a great annual exercise. GIFTS Online makes it easy to identify double entries of contacts and organizations by providing standard reports located in the Report Manager. At the end of the year you also want to make sure there are not any unscheduled balances or checked-out documents. This information can be pulled using the search filters and the advance search.
ca894191adac046e50cf94d08e68f9a7-huge-gr

f96c2c78b22ea1bc55e70bee1727f65a-huge-ch


Four
The end of the year is also a great time to close-up anything that is still open such as overdue requirements, overdue activities and remaining balances.  A summary report is the perfect one button solution to viewing your balance. And to see a quick list of your overdue requirements just use your filters.   Having automatic reminders set-up for activities and requirements throughout the year can also help to simplify this year end task.
5a6bbe15ccec717be8f7f503bc310de9-huge-re


Five
Get ready for next year. There is nothing better to do at the end of the year than prepping for the next year, while everything is still fresh in your mind.
  • Was there any stage of your workflow that you could use an additional status option? Add it at the end of the year.
  • Was there a dashboard part you wish you had? Add it at the end of the year.
  • Were there templates that you wish had just one more merge field? Add it at the end of the year.
Start the New Year on a positive foot.  Here are some key tips on things that you can do. Reset dates as needed on your dashboards. Switch out contacts if needed on committees. Update any saved searches or views and delete old ones. Also don’t forget to get your budget ready for next year. Click on this link to see a video on how to get started, or watch below.  


 
 
-###-

Leave a Comment

Check back soon!

Share: