Credit card transaction date vs BBMS approved date

Sheila Wortham
Sheila Wortham
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud eTapestry® General Discussions

When receiving donations via credit card, does your organization use the transaction date as the gift date or the post date as the gift date? We usually have a period between the transaction date and the post date, which causes an issue with accounting. I believe the charge date is the gift date. Searching for a solution.


Comments

  • Heather MacKenzie
    Heather MacKenzie
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 August 2025 Monthly Challenge Badge bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge
    Huh. Good question. We've always used the transaction date, but I have no idea why. Open to new ideas.
  • Tara Dustrude
    Tara Dustrude Blackbaud Employee
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
    I would expect most organizations use the Transaction Date as the Gift Date since that's when the donor should see the transaction on their own statement and was the intended date of the gift. The post date is more of an accounting thing and should be handled in whatever you use as your accounting software (like Financial Edge or Quickbooks or something). I suppose you could create a UDF in eTapestry to track a "post date" but it would need to manually edited or Mass Updated later since there would not be a way to calculate it. Is that kind of what you are looking to do?


    Tara
  • Karen Tuecke
    Karen Tuecke Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 August 2025 Monthly Challenge Badge Name Dropper
    Sheila Wortham‍ , we use the transaction date as the gift day, but have a field we use in the gift entry area that we mass update with doing the distribution to accounting. I would highly recommend using that as then the gift would be tributed to the date received, but accounting will have the record of the distribution date and all information is kept in one location.

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