How to capture installments in a multi-year funding Opportunity

Meredith Sheehan

I have started using the Opportunities Dashboard in NXT for a real-time weighted pipeline amount, using Amount Expected. However, our largest Opportunities are multi-year asks. Is there a way or a work around to account for installments in an Opportunity the way you can when you book a pledge? Booking them as separate Opportunities for each year does not feel like it reflects what was actually asked of a funder and would be easy for a Fundraiser to misinterpret when they look back on the data. Curious if anyone else has thoughts on this.

Ken Swift

What convenient timing, I am working on this exact thing for SwiftGrants which uses the RENXT opportunity record to store the data. Our plan is to configure an opportunity currency custom field, allow multiple per opportunity and then store the amount in the value field, the funding year in either custom field date. or possibly the comment field (see below). Our UI will be more streamlined than drilling into the custom fields, but that we store the data would be the same.

Karen Diener

There is no native "installment" functionality for Opportunities, which would probably be helpful. Ken's suggestion is a pretty good one, which you could accomplish without needing SwiftGrants, but there would also not be native reporting in webview in the Work Center or other (minorly) configurable dashboards.

You may be able to set something up in Dashboard Builder but would need to test.

Also, I don't know how often your opportunity ask amounts change, but you would need to make sure the attributes are updated if the ask amount changes. AND decide if you want to add expected installments for the ask amount or the expected amount.

Alex Wong

not sure how my org way of working make sense to yours but here's how we handle.

From our perspective, an opportunity is the ask. if that ask resulted in a multi-year pledge, that multi-year pledge is put into the system (with signed agreement when it is over a threshold) as Pledge gift with installment through the multiple years. The FULL amount of the pledge is consider revenue contribution for the year the pledge is made. The opportunity itself is fulfilled, as of that date. The opporutnity itself is the "obtaining" of the pledge.

We do not track then payment to fulfill as an opportunity. our pledge report handles who needs to pay when.

Dan Snyder

Basically we do the same as @Alex Wong and I 100% agree with his approach. That said, we track the expected number of installments on the opportunity so we can (in Power BI) show the total amount expected (pledge amount) and the current year cash forecast (pledge amount/installments). So not a completely in RE solution but if you are looking to add some expected cash flow information to your forecast for the year this could be an option for those unfulfilled opportunities. Fulfilled opps should definitely be moved over to pledge and report from there.

Sarah Fousse

I think part of the challenge is that the use case for opportunities is a bit different from pledges. Once a commitment is made, pledge installments handle the payment schedule well. What we are trying to understand at the opportunity level is what actually is in the pipeline and how it may be distributed across future years. For example, from a fundraiser or leadership perspective, a $3M opportunity expected over three years looks different from a $3M opportunity expected as a single payment, especially for forecasting future revenue. Being able to see anticipated risk adjusted pipeline value (applying the likelihood to the anticipated amount) by year while the opportunity is prior to pledged is essential. The custom field approach can capture the data, but it still seems difficult for fundraisers to easily see and report on that information within the opportunity record itself.

Alex Wong

my gut feeling is keep the pledge separate from opportunity. When the original opportunity is committed (potentially a multi-year commitment), a pledge would be created for the expected cash to come in. Forecasting of future "revenue"/money coming is really the job of the pledge installment.

So as to not confuse what hasn't been committed (opportunity) vs committed but not yet paid (pledge), I wouldn't recommend this, BUT, if you must, you can create new Opportunity Purpose that is for incoming payment with Expected Date as Installment Date and Expected Amount as Installment Amount.