Year End Cut Off Date

Shawn Marshall
Shawn Marshall
Ninth Anniversary Blackbaud Certified Blackbaud Pro Certified Loyalty Badge
in Organizational Best Practices General Discussions

Hello BB Community! Now that the year end processing hustle is behind us, can I ask what some of you use as your guidelines for establishing a cut off date? We basically go with the first 5 business days in order to receive gifts from the previous year but of course establish donor intent with post mark, check date, credit card processor timestamps. As our organization grows, we are curious if our 5 business days is conservative or not. Thanks in advance for your thoughts/shares!

Comments

  • Angela Tuttle
    Angela Tuttle
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    @Shawn Marshall Hi! Our policy is 4 business days.

  • Faith Murray
    Faith Murray
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Shawn Marshall
    After Jan 2nd passes, if a gift doesn't have a December postmark or online gift transaction date, it gets posted to the new year. We let it ride through Jan 2nd because the post offices are closed on the 1st, and even for local mail it takes at least a day in the postal system to reach us.

    Waiting 5 days … ? We'd have a lot of regional mail that was technically mailed after the new year being posted as last year if we did that. Local mail takes about 1 day to reach us, regional mail (within 150 miles) takes about 2 business days to reach us, and national mail can take 3-5 days to reach us. So I would say 5 days would be the maximum lenient window, if that is what you meant by “conservative”, and not altogether provable to an auditor in the case of a larger gift.

    PS. I would not even consider check date in your calculations. We have often had donors try to “sneak one in” by dating their checks before Dec 31st, when the postmark dates show a Jan 2nd mail date (or much later!), which isn't IRS legit at all.

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 2025 bbcon Attendee Badge

    @Shawn Marshall Those extra days are certainly more crucial if your FY = CY.

    We unofficially went that first week this year considering only postmarks on non-metered mail. After that we did include a reference field in receipt doc that noted postmark date if it was in December just to let donor know we saw that.
    Credit card gifts we used processing date as did you. (We had a couple that came through our system as 1/1 for 12 /31 gifts this year.) Check date is meaningless IMO.

    We were experiencing major delays in USPS mail delivery. Some mail has taken two weeks to reach us - weather delays?

    At previous org which was a FY=CY, for donor recognition we would always check those first half of January gifts to be sure the donor was listed for past CY. Not worth upsetting someone over their name not being listed.

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

    @Shawn Marshall
    Five business days seems a bit fast to me, but we had 2022 postmarked mail coming in for over 3 weeks into this new year!

  • Candy Beckwith
    Candy Beckwith
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Shawn Marshall We use postmark date and have gifts straggling in until about mid-January.

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