Staff Gifts - Automated Process

Lindsay Lewis · January 2021

Hello! Does anyone have a good way to enter staff gifts, and do payroll deduct? Our data administrator has to manually enter these gifts each month. Last year, when we had more staff, she was entering 2,000 gifts manually each month. Does anyone have an automated or better system?

Danielle Lifshitz · January 2021

Hi Lindsay,

You can set up a recurring batch and recommit it each pay period.

Frank Richter · January 2021

We have several hundred employees who pledge each year. We enter the pledge gift into their record before the end of the previous pledge year so it's ready, and then we use a recurring gift batch for each pay period. We add all the donors to a gift batch at the beginning of the year specifying the fund, etc. that they specified on their annual pledge. Our pay periods are every 2 weeks, so we divide the pledge amount by 26 (pay periods) and enter that amount as the recurring gift pay-cash amount on their line on the batch. Make sure the batch is set up to apply these gifts to the pledges. If people change their gift amount, go on leave, or leave the organization at any point, we update the batch and adjust the pledge (or do a write-off at the end of the year).

Karen Diener · January 2021

I agree with Danielle Lifshitz‍ on the recurring batch. It is not a batch of recurring gifts but a batch that is recurring, which means you can commit it repeatedly. I do this for a client and process payroll deductions twice a month.

Start with a new batch but mark it as Recurring on the first tab of the batch setup. My client has some part-time people, so not everyone has a deduction each pay period. I get a spreadsheet from payroll and run totals at the bottom - number of donors and total giving - and add that to my batch for validation purposes. Then I compare my batch to the spreadsheet, adding and subtracting names if needed, which is rare.

After the validation step, I commit the batch with the appropriate gift and post date. There is a third tab in the commit batch step (I don't remember the name offhand) where you can specify the gift date and post date for all gifts. That way you don't need to change them in the batch. There are usually around 70 people in the batch each time and it takes me 15 minutes.

The next payroll run, I open that same recurring batch and go through the same process.

Let me know if you have questions. It's a huge time saver!!

Karen

Dan Snyder · January 2021

Also, if you have the EFT module you can automatically load the transactions that are due into a batch. Here is the KB article.

Austen Brown · January 2021

We do what Danielle Lifshitz‍ does.

Lindsay Lewis · January 2021

Thank you all so much!

Keith Wilson · February 2021

Our organization is medium size and we have between 200-250 employees donating through Payroll deduction. I receive a spreadsheet from Payroll at the end of the month that includes Employee ID, Employee Name, gift date, and gift amount. Using that spreadsheet I create an import file (copy and paste into a template) and import those donations into RE. In my opinion it is more efficient than trying to review a long list of donations either in the batch or on the spreadsheet to figure out which employee gifts were added or terminated during the month. This works especially well if you are at a larger organization with 2,000 gifts to process!

Frank Richter · February 2021

Correction...Our batch is a recurring batch and the gifts are applied to the donors' pledges each pay period as a pay-cash, not a recurring gift pay-cash. I wrote that incorrectly.

Logan Spindler · February 2021

Hi, I'm interested to know what you do if employees designate their gift to a specific fund, but the file from Payroll doesn't include the designation data.

Heather MacKenzie · May 2021

Ditto what Karen Diener‍ does.

Austen Brown · May 2021

#GNinja

Amelia Ketzle · February 2022

@Cindy Massey - is this thread anything that might help your area?

Cindy Massey · February 2022

It sounds like I'm already doing it as most are suggesting…using a Recurring Batch for monthly, semi-monthly and bi-weekly payroll deductions.

Trent Smither · June 2023

@Karen Diener:
I agree with Danielle Lifshitz‍ on the recurring batch. It is not a batch of recurring gifts but a batch that is recurring, which means you can commit it repeatedly. I do this for a client and process payroll deductions twice a month.

Start with a new batch but mark it as Recurring on the first tab of the batch setup. My client has some part-time people, so not everyone has a deduction each pay period. I get a spreadsheet from payroll and run totals at the bottom - number of donors and total giving - and add that to my batch for validation purposes. Then I compare my batch to the spreadsheet, adding and subtracting names if needed, which is rare.

After the validation step, I commit the batch with the appropriate gift and post date. There is a third tab in the commit batch step (I don't remember the name offhand) where you can specify the gift date and post date for all gifts. That way you don't need to change them in the batch. There are usually around 70 people in the batch each time and it takes me 15 minutes.

The next payroll run, I open that same recurring batch and go through the same process.

Let me know if you have questions. It's a huge time saver!!

Karen

Late to this discussion, but thank you all. Is this still best practice?

Austen Brown · June 2023

@Trent Smither - Yes, or you can do it through an import. For past orgs, it was a manageable number so I did it through a Recurring Gift Batch.

JoAnn Strommen · June 2023

@Trent Smither I've done it with a recurring batch. If you have a lot of ins and outs it can be some work.

When I processed these, I used the auto generate batch. I had a query of all records paying via payroll deduction and used Tools > Auto Generate Transactions to create my batch. This way I only had to remove those not having a deduction. I didn't have to add name back in. I liked it a little better especially for those with varied payment schedules.

Either works.

Karen Diener · June 2023

@Trent Smither
I think it depends on the Organization too. The client I was working with would not have the skillset to do an import or manage any type of integration.

Karen

Brian Soucie · June 2023

@Trent Smither For us, the recurring gift batch created too much work as we have a significant number of employees who don't have a deduction each pay period. There was a tremendous amount of time wasted on comparing the recent report to the batch and making the changes, including adding any new employees that commenced.

What we've started doing instead is using an ImportOmatic profile to map the fields in the payroll report and do a straight import each time. Our payroll team sends us notifications of new signups so we can get them entered in the system ahead of time. We add their employee ID as an alias to assist with matching and have a dictionary setup to translate the payroll code to the RE fund. It works really well and saves us a ton of time.

I realise this option requires IOM but you can do something similar with RE import, as others have mentioned.

Staff Gifts - Automated Process

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