How to treat refunded gifts

SALLY KHAN
SALLY KHAN
Eighth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Boomerang (2021)
in Blackbaud Altru® General Discussions

I want to know how other organizations treat refunds in RE 7. Currently, we zero out the amount and mark as a refund in reference. This allows us to see the refund in the gift tab. Unfortunately, when I am querying on last gift date for an appeal mailing and the refund is the last “gift” in the record, I am not truly pulling the last gift. I then have to go back in each record to get the actual last real gift amount and gift date and adjust accordingly in my excel data file. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Comments

  • Heather Pauli
    Heather Pauli
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    @sally Khan I'm awful with creating queries, but if I'm understanding what you are trying to do, is there a way to add the Query Field “Last Gift Amount” operator “Greater than” and value “.01” to the query so you won't pick up the zero amount gifts that have been refunded?

  • SALLY KHAN
    SALLY KHAN
    Eighth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Boomerang (2021)

    @Heather Pauli Hi Heather, thank you for your response. Unfortunately, that won't work. Last gift filter will always pull the last gift and if I have amount is greater than (or equal to) .01 the person won't pull altogether because it's technically still the last gift.

    I just wanted to know how other organizations processes refunds in RE to see if there is a better way than what we are doing. Thank you.

  • Chris Nungesser
    Chris Nungesser
    Fifth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    Hi @sally Khan!

    Trying to think this through. I think I get the issue you're describing. I like @Heather Pauli's suggestion. I think the challenge there is that you're (likely) using a constituent query (where her idea would be appropriate for a gift/revenue query).

    What are your fundraising team's business needs here? And what are the needs of your accounting team (and your auditors) with these refund situations?

    • Does your Raiser's Edge sync to your GL or accounting software or anything like that? Are there any bookkeeping implications to you adjusting the records?
      • Say that you process a $100 gift in February and then have to refund that $100 gift in March. How does that reflect in your financial records? Is it as if the gift never came in? No revenue at all? Or do your records show $100 in February and a loss of $100 in March? Basically, does your team or your financial team need you to track both transactions in Raiser's Edge? Since you're zeroing out the gift amount currently, my sense is that it's probably that first scenario where it's as if the gift never happened.
    • How are credit card gifts handled?
      • Do you process any credit cards in Raiser's Edge? Or are they processed in a different system and then documented in RE?
      • Are online gifts processed through YourMembership and then documented in Raiser's Edge?

    If you are not using Raiser's Edge to process a gift, I wonder if you could delete the gift altogether and then document the refund using an Interaction (or something else) with a specific interaction type. The money did not actually pass through RE. So the refund did not pass through RE either. Tracking that history would be preserved in your credit card processing system (I would assume). I'm not sure what purpose keeping the zero dollar gift serves. Let me know if I'm missing something there.

    If money is actually being processed in Raiser's Edge and the refund is also processed through Raiser's Edge, then I'm not sure you would want to delete that gift record.

    Good luck!

    Chris

    Follow-up edit: if you cannot delete the gift and document the refund in a different way - which would probably still be my first choice - then I have another idea. But would you please help me understand how you are using the Last Gift Date field that you are exporting? Is it to use as a merge field in your Appeal? And what I'm wondering is if it's something you're using in Raiser's Edge or if you are exporting it for a purpose after Raiser's Edge. Like maybe a merge field in your Appeal that you'll send to your printer/mailhouse. If that is the case then you could pull that information in a different query, have the two export files, and bring the information together in Excel (I can share a Excel formula that can do that for you). So then it's okay that all your information didn't come in one export file.

  • SALLY KHAN
    SALLY KHAN
    Eighth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Boomerang (2021)

    @Chris Nungesser

    Hi Chris,

    Thank you for your response. RE and our accounting office is not in sync. Donations are not processed in RE. For whatever reasons, our organization documents refunds on the gift tab – they basically zero out the initial gift and mark it as a refund in the reference field. I just wanted to know how others document refunds.

    As to how/why this is an issue for me, I pull mailing lists for appeals and segment my list by last gift date. Last gift date is the primary query filter. So, if it's November and my year-end appeal is to donors who made a gift in the last five years (2023 to present, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019), each year is a separate query and the filter is the last gift date. If John Smith made five donations in 2020 but the last one was refunded with no subsequent gift(s), that refund would than show up on the 2020 segment of my mailing list with last gift amount of zero.

    I hope this explains my issue. Again, I just wanted to know how others document refunds.

    Thank you.


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