Does anyone enter gifts and post to the general ledger for their business office?

Sharon Rein

Does anyone enter gifts and post to the general ledger for their business office? Any information pros and glitches to look out for when doing this will be appreciated.

 

Christine Adams

Are you using FE or ??


We use post-o-matic to move the gifts from RE to Banner.

 

Sharon Rein

reply I will have RE NXT to post to the general ledger in  FE NXT

Carrie Aranda

I manager (and also do) gift entry and then post over the GL (RE to FE).  I just recently lost the long-time data entry person who had the process in his head and never documented it.  So we have run into a few glitches.  My advice is to make sure that gift entry, RE database management and the accounting/finance department are all on the same page with how gifts flow to Raiser's Edge and then flow to the GL.  Most of our glitches are due to a breakdown in process or someone not understanding the process.  For example, our Post to GL date in gift entry has to be the date that accounting has as the deposit date.  Therefore, we can't enter any checks into RE until they flow through accounting and get a deposit date.  Online gifts must have a Post to GL date that matches when we receive the BBMS disbursement.  These are little things unique to our structure and I would have never thought about them since I am looking at the data from a fundraising perspective.  And, once you have the process worked out, document it to death!


With a recent merger and lots of restructuring and movement of people, we are having to discuss this process in detail.  Unfortunately, there is no documentation and everyone involved only knows their small piece.  So we are in lots of discussions about how information flows between accounting and development and as an extension, RE to FE.


Hope this helps!  Good luck!

Sharon Rein

Thanks for your reply.As of now  I give the donation checks to Accounting and she scans them in to be deposited in the bank with a deposit  report I run.  How do you get the deposit date prior to you entering them into RE NXT and making sure they go to the correct fund?

Carrie Aranda

When checks come into the office, they go to accounting first.  Accounting scans the checks, deposits the checks and then sends us the file of check images.  With the scanned files come the deposit dates (file name is "1-30-20 Deposit").  We data enter the gifts into Raiser's Edge directing any donor requests to the proper funds (restrictions).  I push to the GL at the end of the week all of the previous week's gifts, (GL push on 1/30/20 is all of the gifts through 1/24/20).  By delaying a week, it gives us time to ensure that everything is coded correctly.  Once gifts are posted to the GL, it is a lot harder to change the fund and other gift information.  When we set up a fund in Raiser's Edge, we have to get the correct GL codes from accounting so that everything flows the right way.   

Cathy Kaiser

We do just the opposite.  Checks that come in the mail are logged by the receptionist who then delivers them to Development.  Then they are put in a daily batch, with the gift date of the day they are received and typically a post date of the following day.  The checks are given to Finance to deposit.  For online donations we use the BBMS disbursement date as the post date.  What is time-consuming for me are the direct deposits (United Way, Benevity, PayPal, etc.)  On a weekly basis Finance emails a list of those donations and I post them individually using a query that pulls in the gift.  We've only been posting directly to FE for a few months.  The first two were awful as we worked out the kinks.  Now it's fairly seamless.

Sharon Rein

Thank you Cathy I like your way. I will let everyone know when we implement this what way we do it. I have not seen any gift procedure guidelines about this.

Amanda Mogridge

We process our donations similar to Cathy, but we don't have FE. Our mailroom processes all mail to the college, then gives me (Manager of Advancement Services, Development) anything addressed to me, Development, or anything that looks like a donation (sometimes they have to open to see). Likewise, other departments (Grants Management, Faculty, etc) who receive donations/grant checks bring them to me. I process them directly into a RE databaseview Batch. Then I commit the batch and export into a spreadsheet, which I then format and print, then bring to our business office with the checks (which I have already scanned for Development records, along with any backup documentation that came with checks - documentation then gets shredded, except for documentation for gifts $10,000 or more, which we keep in donors' hard copy files). I also batch down Online Express donations for each cycle to the business office. The Business Office lets me know about wire transfers on a case by case basis, which I enter into a Batch, similar to checks. I then run our acknowledgement letters using a Mail function based on conditional letters. On a quarterly basis, I send a detailed gift export to the business office who will let me know if there are discrepancies between their records and mine, and we adjust accordingly. Hope this helps!