Recurring Gift Pay Cash not reducing Pledge Receivables

Renee Graham

We have two donors who have recently opted to do recurring gift, they entered them using Online Express.  We processed the gifts in Electronic Funds transfer, processing their credit cards.   The gifts are showing on the individual records. The gift type is Recurring Gift Pay Cash and the GL codes are correct. 


The issue the accounting team is having is that the pledge receivable is off by the amount of these two gifts.


Any thoughts on how to fix this?


Thank you!

JoAnn Strommen

Just a thought -

You said 'pledge receivables' are off.  Recurring pay-cash are not pledge receivables in my experience. The recurring gift is usually not posted and the payments are posted to accounting like a cash gift. You may need to change GL account to cash vs. receivable if they are different accounts.

Judy Spigarelli

I've explained the difference between pledges and recurring gifts as such - pledges are a "promise to pay" a specified amount, making it a pledge receivable.  A recurring gift is not a promise to pay - it's more of a "charge me this much until I say stop".  Recurring gift payments are created against the Recurring Gift Template (simply called recurring gift) and are not pledge payments.  When a donor already has a pledge in my system, I write it off and note that it was replaced by a recurring gift.

Debra Calderon Morales

Hi JoAnn. Quick question...

Similar to Renee's two donors who have opted to do a recurring gift, we have a donor who signed a pledge agreement for a significant amount to be paid over five years, and we later learned that she would like us to charge her credit card monthly, to pay down the pledge. We converted the pledge to a recurring gift in Raiser's Edge, which means that the outstanding balance was, in a sense, written off. How does your organization report this out? Does the expected amount (per fiscal year) get calculated for reporting?

Appreciate your help.

Thank you,

Debra

Renee Graham

Debra


I was finally able to figure this out with a lot of digging and trial and error. Recurring gifts do not show up as pledges or pledge payments on the reports. When you run the pledge journal they are listed as another item with a total (we have to add them manually to our gl postings as we use a different accounting package) Hope this helps!

JoAnn Strommen

Debra Calderon Morales‍, For your situation I would have left the gift as a pledge and applied the monthly credit card payments against it. Monthly payments do not have to be entered as recurring gifts. We have many pledges being paid by monthly credit card or bank debit payments.


Reporting on anticipated recurring gift payments is different as in most cases there is not a commitment, payments continued only until donor says stop. So often not considered in projections.


There is at least one report in RE that looks at recurring gifts:

How to report on recurring gift payments from Recurring gifts within a specific date range
https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/48830?_ga=2.184494630.1284767661.1612189813-597430115.1593094066


Welcome to RE and the community.

Debra Calderon Morales

Thank you for this, JoAnn. I really appreciate your time and messages. That makes sense about leaving this one as a pledge. Thank you for the link to the article too.

Have a great day!

Best,

Debra

Debra Calderon Morales

Thank you, Renee. Yes, this helps a lot. Have a great week!