How do I properly fix/remove an incorrect batch entry?

Liz Wright

Hi everyone,

We are just on the cusp of fully switching to RENXT and Financial Edge, so we are all very new at this.

I accidentally coded a pledge payment to the wrong fund number. The batch was committed but not yet posted to the G/L in Financial Edge.

I tried to change the fund number in the constituent's gift record, but that didn't affect the pledge balance, so I deleted the payment from the constituent record in the hopes that I could simply re-enter the payment in a new gift batch with the correct info. Is this the best practice for correcting an error?

I shared my plan with the business office, and they expressed concern that there would now be a double pledge payment on their books. They want to know what I need to CORRECTLY do to eliminate any confusion in the ledger. Is that something I can help them with, or should they be contacting help on the Financial Edge side?

Thanks for your help!

Liz

Austen Brown

@Liz Wright - You should be able to change the fund directly on the pledge payment once it exists within the Database. I am a bit confused around the “that didn't affect the pledge balance” - how would a fund impact the pledge's balance? Do you mean to say you wanted to change the payment amount?

Liz Wright

@Austen Brown I changed the fund directly on the pledge payment, then I refreshed the screen and viewed it in Web view. The payment was still showing on the original incorrect fund.

I think I just need to know what to do now that I have deleted the payment altogether. The payment was not posted to the G/L, so should I just re-enter it in a new batch and let the business office know the new batch number?

JoAnn Strommen

@Liz Wright Did the person have a pledge for fund A used originally and not for fund B - correct fund? If so, that is changing the gift type from pay-cash to cash. That can not be done on a gift even if it is not posted.

The only payment coming to the business office will be the payments that post to the G/L. If a change is made to a gift before posting, business would not see the incorrect data.

Yes, it sounds like you need to re-enter the payment.

There seem to be somethings that take time to transfer between db and webview. Other things are instantaneous. The pledge payment if you deleted it should not show in either view.

Alex Wong

@Liz Wright
as mentioned already.. your “business office” (finance team) should not care an unposted gift being deleted. RE gift entered that isn't posted does not show up in FE yet, posting will mark gift in RE as posted, and generate the transaction entries in FE.

So you should reenter the gift as it should be entered.

But going back to your original situation, if a pay-cash gift is not corrected coded, but is not posted yet, simply open the gift in database view and edit the gift. The only thing you cannot edit on unposted gift is gift type IF it has already been applied to pledge, it cannot go back to “cash" gift type (unapplied state).

If a gift HAS been posted, you will do an adjustment on the gift to change the information.

generally you shouldn't opt for deleting a gift for reentry to correct info entered incorrectly on a gift record.

Rachel Kauer

@Liz Wright

“I shared my plan with the business office, and they expressed concern that there would now be a double pledge payment on their books. They want to know what I need to CORRECTLY do to eliminate any confusion in the ledger. Is that something I can help them with, or should they be contacting help on the Financial Edge side?”

Hi Liz,

Our RE is integrated with our Business office's FE and they have VERY tight control over both sides of the database. Based on my experience, the reason they are likely concerned even though a batch has not been posted, is because they ran a pre-post report and it indicated a deletion or other change. This wigs our Business Office out big time. As such we have a documented policy for preventing this and still making a data entry correction.

This is our policy at my org:

"For a committed batch, that has not been GL-Posted, as long as you or the Business Office does *not* run a Pre-Posting report, you can still change any of the gifts you entered by going into the record and deleting or changing any data entry errors.

Any changes that are found after the Pre-Posting report has been done need to be adjusted. See the Adjustments directions. You should always obtain approval from the Business Office before starting an adjustment."

At our organization to “correctly” fix the data entry error you had we would do the following:

Adjust to Zero to reverse the gift

An adjustment creates an honest audit trail and gives you a chance to document the reason for the adjustment on the adjustment, such as “User Error” with as much relevant detail as possible. For example, my org usually documents the following:

• the date the error was identified
• who identified the error
• who was it reported to
• who approved the adjustment
  

Steps to reverse/ zero Out the gift

• Open the Pay-Cash gift
• Right-click gift and select Adjust
• Set the amount to $0
• Document the reason for the error.
  *Change the DATES. You need to roll back the dates to be the same as the original post date.
• Save
• Renter the gift correctly.

https://kb.blackbaud.com/knowledgebase/articles/Article/48241