Gift Date Added from RENXT donation forms

Dan Snyder · May 2021

Curious if others have had issues with the NXT donation forms date added value being the same date as the donor enters their information, not the date the batch/gift is actually committed? I am assuming I am not the only one who runs into issues with this on things like gift reports where you might look at gifts entered yesterday or last week, only to find that you are missing the NXT form donations.

Any workarounds that aren't too much trouble? And vote for this idea in the idea bank so we don't need a workaround ?.

Megan Thiel · May 2021

This is a challenge for us as well. For the most part, we change the gift date to 'today' (the date on which we approve the batch) on each gift w/in a batch - so that as you mention - we can run a report on gifts entered 'today' and provide the information to Finance/Accounting. We've also tried to approve the batches with the dates as-is and then run a query using 'last changed on' (today) in combination with 'last changed by' (our gift processor). If you do not specify 'last changed by', the query may bring in recurring gifts that seem to get constantly updated by the 'NXT user'. However, even then, it is not a great solution because the query may still pull in gifts that were not processed 'today' but edited 'today' including prior pledges for which we adjusted an attribute, prior gifts for which we changed the acknowledgement etc... We've inquired with Blackbaud about adding a 'batch approval date' field to query/reports but as of now it does not exist.

Hoping that others will respond on this topic! We use NXT giving and event forms and therefore have a lot of gifts to approve through NXT batch. And we would like to be able to process these gifts more efficiently!

Faith Murray · May 2021

Easy workaround. Pull your queries/reports off of the batch number. The forms need to use the actual donation date (not batch entry date) for the donor's tax records, especially during crucial times like end of year giving. But if you pull off batch number then "date" or "last changed" or pledge adjustments no longer matter.

PS. For Finance, we usually just run off a copy of the Validation report that is generated during batch posting. It has all the info they need.

Megan Thiel · May 2021

Yes, one would just need to keep track of the batch numbers approved.

How do you access/run the validation report?

Faith Murray · May 2021

I realized the Validation report is something we pull out of the batch in DB view. But you can still pull by batch: to get the batch number if you don't have it, you can open up any gift record and find the batch number at the top of the window; then use it as a filter in Lists.

Carrie Aranda · May 2021

We process all of online gifts and event registrations through NXT and leave the date as is because that is the date that the donor made the donation. However, I pull together a list of gifts that are processed each day to send to our development team, CEO and CFO. I pull this list through a Gift List in NXT and filter on batch number/name. I have the columns set up on the list and all I have to do each day is run the list for the batches that were processed. I export each batch and combine into one Excel spreadsheet that gets emailed out to everyone. The one really nice feature we gain by running this list from NXT is that in the Excel spreadsheet is a View Record link. Any of our team can click on that link for a gift in the Excel spreadsheet and the full gift record will open in NXT. It has saved me from answering a bunch of questions about a gift... they are learning to click that link and then scroll through the gift record, see anything attached to the gift record and easily click over to the constituent record to make a phone call, etc.

The one date that accounting is stickler on is the GL Posting Date. This has to match the deposit/disbursement date. Before posting over the GL, I run a query to pull the NXT gifts by date, reconcile them to the BBMS disbursement report and then use a global change to mass update the GL Posting Date to the correct one. It has worked for us really well and this is a piece that I would have had to do whether using the NXT forms, Online Express or NetCommunity. For online gifts, the gift date and GL Posting Date are never the same date so we have always had to change them based on when the funds were received.

Dan Snyder · May 2021

Thanks for all the great responses, we had submitted information to Finance using the validation report in batch, but in order to streamline the sharing of information between offices we moved to once weekly exports to Excel that summarize the deposits by fund and source (online, mail, stock, etc.). Saves us a bunch of time not having to save the validation reports and saves the finance office time as well with entry. It really is those recurring gifts that come in from Friday-Sunday that are the issue or if our gift processor is out of the office the gifts may not be added right away so the date issue is a problem there as well. Anyway, thanks for all the comments.

Tonya Higgins · September 2023

@Carrie Aranda:

The one date that accounting is stickler on is the GL Posting Date. This has to match the deposit/disbursement date. Before posting over the GL, I run a query to pull the NXT gifts by date, reconcile them to the BBMS disbursement report and then use a global change to mass update the GL Posting Date to the correct one. It has worked for us really well and this is a piece that I would have had to do whether using the NXT forms, Online Express or NetCommunity. For online gifts, the gift date and GL Posting Date are never the same date so we have always had to change them based on when the funds were received.

Has anyone found a better process for the post date? We do this too to make life easier for our bookkeeper to post gifts. This means only those with BBMS access and the training can verify the post date matches FE or the bookkeeper changes the post date to match the disbursement report. Which is fine… forces me to review gift entry… but seems to me that it would be even better if the post date could be left alone and FE auto-match these gifts to their proper disbursements since they are all Blackbaud product gifts? (It's possible I am too optimistic about what technology can do

Karen Diener · September 2023

@Tonya Higgins When I work with clients aligning the GL post date to the BBMS disbursement date, they make the change at the point of gift entry. There is a disbursement schedule available to all BBMS users, and details about how to access can be found in Knowledgebase article 189436.

I think that may help your situation!

Karen

Tonya Higgins · September 2023

@Karen Diener Thank you! Yes, we are working towards trying to make sure the post date is what the schedule should be.

Lee Grisham · October 2023

@Tonya Higgins Agree with your assessment that it “should” match up automatically as they are all BB products! You should at least be able to export a matching field from BBMS and NXT to use to connect the two, but they disable that functionality. You can see the BBMS ID in the gift record, but it is not an exportable or query field. ?‍♂️

This is part of the reason we moved away from BBMS and NXT forms. Even after changing over to the 4 disbursals per month, it was a ton of work to have to individually make changes upon gift entry for a small team to keep up with in NXT view. If the batch functionality was improved, i.e. adding defaults!!!, it would be much easier to do and not a huge problem at all. As that is not planned for this coming year from what I can tell, it will not be a source of revenue for BB.

Andy Nolan · October 2023

@Dan Snyder I agree, there need to be more date options in RE NXT! Our Finance team insists batches cannot be approved until we receive the money, so we wait for the EFTs from BBMS before committing a batch of NXT donation form gifts. Which means there is a lag between the gift date and the approval date. We would love to have the option for Gift date (for the donor of when they gave the gift) and the Finance date (when we received the money - depending on the third party platform, these can be VERY different). Due to the gift date issue, we have had limitations on using things like workflows for new gifts and funky reporting.

Tioga Anderson · March 27

@Dan Snyder
I didn't see this mentioned anywhere and idea isn't marked as implemented but they appear to have fixed this. Gift date added is now the date the batch was committed.

Dan Snyder · March 27

@Tioga Anderson It was not mentioned, but you are correct! @Anthony Gallo let a number of us squeaky wheels? know that it was released.

Anthony Gallo · March 27

@Dan Snyder @Tioga Anderson our docs get published on Tuesdays. This one was ready early so we shipped it out.

Tioga Anderson · March 27

@Anthony Gallo Awesome, thanks for fixing this!

Gift Date Added from RENXT donation forms

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