GL post date vs Gift Date

Kathleen Onello

I am new to Raisers Edge and had a quick question. What is the difference between the GL post date and the Gift date especially when running reports?

JoAnn Strommen

How the two fields are used will vary from org to org. Which you select when running reports depends on how you use and what you want to pull from the report.  Not sure from your question, if you post gifts. Some orgs do not actually post to GL so date is arbitrary.  Others every gift is posted. Some don't post pledges so that affects what pulls if you're reporting by GL Post date.


Gift date can be:

date gift received at org

date gift processed by org

date gift deposited into bank account

date gift made online

date gift made online is processed/batch in RE

etc.

 

GL post date usually is the date gift hits your financials:

date deposited into bank account

date online gifts hit bank account

date gifts processed by org

etc.

As you can see, they might always be the same for some orgs or be quite different. You need to know how your org uses the two dates in gift entry so that you can pull what you intend when querying or reporting based on those dates.  Ex: Gift date is 8/28/20. Gift not posted until 9/1/20. This will definitely pull differently when looking at monthly reports based on the gift/GL post date. 


Hope that helps a bit.

Catherine Burns

Great answer from JoAnn Strommen‍ 


Also Date added is a system date that is automatically recorded and can be queried/reported, so you don't need to use Gift Date or GL Post Date for date processed by org. We use Gift Date for date received at org, and GL Post Date for date received into financials. We don't actually post to GL, but still use GL Post Date for reporting and reconciliation purposes.