Event Benefits and the General Ledger

Joseph Styons

How do you guys handle the GL mappings for the benefit portion of event registration payments? Do you just create a single catch-all account for all benefits? Or do you create a new mapping for every event? Or something else? I've seen both ways and I'm not really happy with either one. Is there a best practice I'm not aware of?

Stu Manewith

@Joseph Styons just to be clear, you are talking about the portion of an event registration that covers the tangible benefit that the registrant receives (eg, a dinner).

Assuming that's the case, the post-to-GL mappings have to be driven by how the finance team chooses to record those dollars, and that could be different from org to org. Some will record all of an event registration to event revenue. Others may split the revenue between the pure donation portion vs. the payments-for-benefits portion. That said, segregating the benefit vs. non-benefit portion of a registration payment is really more of a development task than a finance task, since Development is responsible for proper receipting. Finance, of course, is responsible for accurately recording the revenue, ensuring compliance, and using the funds raised per donor intent.