Donations with decimal point - and reports.

Shimmy Ohana · June 2020

Hi

I am curious if any US charities have a high volume of donations with a decimal point? e.g. $30.28

My guess is that donors in the US would stick to fixed figures e.g. $5.00, $10,00 $50,00, etc. and 99% of donations are a round number.

Here in the UK we have something called GiftAid - where the government tops up gifts by 25% (tax relief), so if someone gives a donation of 25.00 and qualifies for GiftAid the Gross Income to us as a charity would be £31.25 (this is great).

I am noticing some major errors in NXT reporting whereby all gifts in the report are rounded down. ignoring the decimal point.

This means when my report includes very many gifts over a large period of time (with a big number of them including decimal points), I am finding that the actual real amount (export to excel) is very different to the amount showing in REPORT BUILDER and ready reports - because NXT is rounding them all down in the dashboard.

I tried reaching out to NXT support - apparently, reports and insights in NXT are meant only for "are meant to be used as ballpark figures to give a quick glance amount" and not as an exact accurate report. - which i kinda find strange to be honest.

Happy to hear some thoughts on this.

Dariel Dixon · June 2020

Shimmy Ohana:
Hi

I am curious if any US charities have a high volume of donations with a decimal point? e.g. $30.28

My guess is that donors in the US would stick to fixed figures e.g. $5.00, $10,00 $50,00, etc. and 99% of donations are a round number.

Here in the UK we have something called GiftAid - where the government tops up gifts by 25% (tax relief), so if someone gives a donation of 25.00 and qualifies for GiftAid the Gross Income to us as a charity would be £31.25 (this is great).

I am noticing some major errors in NXT reporting whereby all gifts in the report are rounded down. ignoring the decimal point.

This means when my report includes very many gifts over a large period of time (with a big number of them including decimal points), I am finding that the actual real amount (export to excel) is very different to the amount showing in REPORT BUILDER and ready reports - because NXT is rounding them all down in the dashboard.

I tried reaching out to NXT support - apparently, reports and insights in NXT are meant only for "are meant to be used as ballpark figures to give a quick glance amount" and not as an exact accurate report. - which i kinda find strange to be honest.

Happy to hear some thoughts on this.

To answer you first question, while the majority of gifts we receive are round numbers, they are nowhere near that high a percentage. I'd gather to say probably around 66% to 80% at best (and once credit card fees are taken into consideration...yeah).

I went into reporting and the report builder and did not see any options for displaying decimal points at all. But to hear this assessment from NXT support (emphasis is mine) is embarrassing and hypocritical to say the least. I understand that we can use them as a ballpark figure, but to say they aren't to be used as an accurate report is complete nonsense. Especially if those extra decimals are being used for the calculations. At least, I would hope so, because if they aren't then those figures are even less accurate than originally thought. But it seems like that should be an option to display them, as I'm almost certain that those extra decimal points are there. I'd vote for that in the idea bank. For a production based system, it shouldn't have been an afterthought.

It's a shame that the company wants to push NXT for so many things, but then makes you go to database view for more accurate reporting. It really sends the wrong message.

Shimmy Ohana · June 2020

Daniel. Thanks for replying.

You wrote

"Especially if those extra decimals are being used for the calculations. At least, I would hope so, because if they aren't then those figures are even less accurate than originally thought."

That's exactly the point - The decimal of every individual gift is rounded up / down, and then the new figure is added to a total.

This total seems to be completely off

10 gifts of $1.49 should show the result are $14.90 or if the way its presented ignores the last decimal - I'm happy with $14

Try to make a report builder and tell me what you see in NXT.....

(note NXT reports can take up to 2 hours until updated from database view)

Elaine Tucker · June 2020

Wow - once again blackbaud has not only dropped the ball, but it's in pieces! I did a quick insight test to see if decimals would show up, and they don't for gifts, but for fundraiser credits. they do. the Blue box is committed revenue and the yellow box is fundraiser credit (false indicates this is not a past due pledge). So it seems to me if they can have it show up for one thing they should be able to have it show for another.

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Rachel Cavalier · June 2020

I can see how a dashboard might be supposed to be for a "quick glance amount" perhaps and not be completely accurate - but to be SO inaccurate is a nightmare ? As you say, all those rounding errors on thousands of gifts over a number of years really do add up and I too don't get why the rounding couldn't be done after all the addition.

I know you can turn off Gift Aid showing up in analysis in web view, but that doesn't solve your problem at all.

Shimmy Ohana · June 2020

Rachel Cavalier‍

Are you experiencing similar issues with reporting?

Rachel Cavalier · June 2020

Not that any of my colleagues have mentioned - but at the same time I'd say that all of our reporting was being done in DB view rather than using web view.

Donations with decimal point - and reports.

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