Entering Cheques from Payroll companies

Beth Duffus

Hello, we just went live in December and have not gotten RE to the point where we can rely on it yet. One of the basic issues is payroll cheques. We often get cheques from payroll companies who we want to soft-credit (it's a complicated system where they really are doing extra work for us) and yet all of the hard credits and receipts need to go to the actual donors. We want the deposit sheet to have the total amount and the name that is on the cheque for the bank's sake. Our Project Manager seems lost on this as well. These are the four types of name issue cheques we primarily get 1) Payroll company where they rarely if ever get a hard credit we must soft credit many individual donors 2) Theatre who we often hard credit for their own donations (but they're a charity as well and don't need tax receipts) but run their own payroll so an actor may have deuctions come off their cheque so we need to hard credit the individual donor and soft credit the theatre 3) Assigned royalties, this person has passed away and still gets royalties. So it's a cheque from the royalty administration organization that is written in the name of the deceased and on occassion a tax receipt needs to be given to the POA of the estate. 4) A cheque that comes from one person BUT they have made it clear that they took cash from say 3 other people deposited it and this cheque represents the donations of the four of them as outlined. This is our #1 issue right now, so any suggestions would be helpful I really can't find anything on the forums from searches and our PM doesn't have any ideas.

Melissa Graves 2

Beth Duffus:
Hello, we just went live in December and have not gotten RE to the point where we can rely on it yet. One of the basic issues is payroll cheques. We often get cheques from payroll companies who we want to soft-credit (it's a complicated system where they really are doing extra work for us) and yet all of the hard credits and receipts need to go to the actual donors. We want the deposit sheet to have the total amount and the name that is on the cheque for the bank's sake. Our Project Manager seems lost on this as well. These are the four types of name issue cheques we primarily get 1) Payroll company where they rarely if ever get a hard credit we must soft credit many individual donors 2) Theatre who we often hard credit for their own donations (but they're a charity as well and don't need tax receipts) but run their own payroll so an actor may have deuctions come off their cheque so we need to hard credit the individual donor and soft credit the theatre 3) Assigned royalties, this person has passed away and still gets royalties. So it's a cheque from the royalty administration organization that is written in the name of the deceased and on occassion a tax receipt needs to be given to the POA of the estate. 4) A cheque that comes from one person BUT they have made it clear that they took cash from say 3 other people deposited it and this cheque represents the donations of the four of them as outlined. This is our #1 issue right now, so any suggestions would be helpful I really can't find anything on the forums from searches and our PM doesn't have any ideas.

#4 is the only one I take issue with - In the US the IRS would see this as a gift only from the person who wrote the check. We would not be crediting or receipting these other individuals for these gifts - Soft credit only. Essentially this means you should not be allowing people to take money intended for you and putting it into their own personal bank accounts. I do not know if this is the same in Canada or not but it seems like it would be. It is a control issue-you lose control when people are personally depositing money intended for you.

Otherwise, your finance office needs to be treating this as separate gifts - even if they come in one check. If you really need this JUSTfor the deposit slip the best way I can think of to do this is by using a pivot report. You can use a query with SC to recipient and pivot on the check number - this will total by check number, You can add the names and if you SC to recipient you should most of the time get the party you need to show.

JoAnn Strommen

Beth Duffus:
Hello, we just went live in December and have not gotten RE to the point where we can rely on it yet. One of the basic issues is payroll cheques. We often get cheques from payroll companies who we want to soft-credit (it's a complicated system where they really are doing extra work for us) and yet all of the hard credits and receipts need to go to the actual donors. We want the deposit sheet to have the total amount and the name that is on the cheque for the bank's sake. Our Project Manager seems lost on this as well. These are the four types of name issue cheques we primarily get 1) Payroll company where they rarely if ever get a hard credit we must soft credit many individual donors 2) Theatre who we often hard credit for their own donations (but they're a charity as well and don't need tax receipts) but run their own payroll so an actor may have deuctions come off their cheque so we need to hard credit the individual donor and soft credit the theatre 3) Assigned royalties, this person has passed away and still gets royalties. So it's a cheque from the royalty administration organization that is written in the name of the deceased and on occassion a tax receipt needs to be given to the POA of the estate. 4) A cheque that comes from one person BUT they have made it clear that they took cash from say 3 other people deposited it and this cheque represents the donations of the four of them as outlined. This is our #1 issue right now, so any suggestions would be helpful I really can't find anything on the forums from searches and our PM doesn't have any ideas.

Whew - from my perspective you've got a lot of issues going.  And I don't know where different legalities are for Canada if any.  This is just some initial thoughts.  Just so many unknown factors in your scenarios.

There are a lot of posts on the forums related to payroll deductions/third party payments.  You may want to search again.

1.  Why can't you rely on RE after 2-3 months?

2. What is your definition of a soft-credit? 

Your situation #4 - The person who wrote the check is our donor unless they've legally become an agent for those giving them cash.  Pretty unlikely.  What do you do - HC whole amount to check writer? 

Your situation #3 - Does POA / estate sign the checks over to you or are they made out to you?  It sounds like estate may be donor.  Does estate have the decision power that you receive the money?

Your situation #2 - Need for receipts in not factor in determining HC vs. SC to us.  I know Canada has different regulations. Does theater receipt the actor for the donations that come to your org?  Or are they acting as your agent - collecting the funds for you?  Why do you feel you need to SC the theater for employee payroll deductions? 

Your situation #1 - Payroll company.  Again it depends on the company.  We have companies forwarding us payroll deductions where they receipt the employee and just send us the $ (company HC/employee SC) and others where they send us the money acting as our agent and we HC and receipt the employee.  Several of the companies I contacted myself to verify what situation was.  Different orgs using RE will do it differently.

I don't deal with sending a deposit from RE to the bank but don't know why they can't work with the $ figure.

Just my 2 cents.

Aldera Chisholm

Beth Duffus:
Hello, we just went live in December and have not gotten RE to the point where we can rely on it yet. One of the basic issues is payroll cheques. We often get cheques from payroll companies who we want to soft-credit (it's a complicated system where they really are doing extra work for us) and yet all of the hard credits and receipts need to go to the actual donors. We want the deposit sheet to have the total amount and the name that is on the cheque for the bank's sake. Our Project Manager seems lost on this as well. These are the four types of name issue cheques we primarily get 1) Payroll company where they rarely if ever get a hard credit we must soft credit many individual donors 2) Theatre who we often hard credit for their own donations (but they're a charity as well and don't need tax receipts) but run their own payroll so an actor may have deuctions come off their cheque so we need to hard credit the individual donor and soft credit the theatre 3) Assigned royalties, this person has passed away and still gets royalties. So it's a cheque from the royalty administration organization that is written in the name of the deceased and on occassion a tax receipt needs to be given to the POA of the estate. 4) A cheque that comes from one person BUT they have made it clear that they took cash from say 3 other people deposited it and this cheque represents the donations of the four of them as outlined. This is our #1 issue right now, so any suggestions would be helpful I really can't find anything on the forums from searches and our PM doesn't have any ideas.

Hi Beth,

I'm in Canada as well, so I might be able to help with the legalities issue re: #4. As long as you have a letter from the cheque writer certifying that the cheque is for a consolidated list of donors, noting the donor names and amounts, then you can receipt to the individuals instead of the cheque writer.

 For #3, we do something somewhat similar. I create an organization constitent for the Estate. The administrator of estate gets listed as contact, and you can then tax receipt based on that. These cheques for us tend to come from a lawyer, or other entity and this works for us.

 We do a lot of soft crediting due to organizations like CanadaHelps gifts, or other such funders.

 Not sure if that's helpful!

Cheers