Reports for budgeting income

Brenda Benson

I've been asked by my supervisor to account for why we are not on track to meet income goals that were set last year (FY ends June 30). The two income lines that we are looking at particularly are Unrestricted Donations from Individuals and Unrestricted Donations from Churches.  I have these as 2 seperate campaigns in Raiser's Edge and they correspond to Accounts in Quickbooks which is what our bookkeeper uses and which is where the budget is accessed. I reconcile incoming donations by Campaign every week with what is shown in Quickbooks. But if I run a Gift Summary Report by Campaign for the entire year, I am not matching what is in Quickbooks and it makes it very difficult for me to have a sane conversation about income coming in when I am not looking at the same numbers.  Currently I am only off by 7% but I have been off by much more in the past. We are a very small shop - part-time bookkeeper, 2 of us in Development. Does anyone have any suggestions for best practices throughout the year that would enable me to either 1) have records that are closer to the bookkeepers or 2) be able to quickly and accurately account for the discrepancies? I am not responsible for the fundraising but I think my supervisors would appreciate if I were on top of things enough to go to them with the info on how far behind we are.  Have you successfully used the goals feature in Raiser's Edge?  If I do that will I need to create a new campaign each fiscal year?

 Brenda Benson

Development Associate

Greenville Seminary

Melissa Graves 2

Brenda Benson:

I've been asked by my supervisor to account for why we are not on track to meet income goals that were set last year (FY ends June 30). The two income lines that we are looking at particularly are Unrestricted Donations from Individuals and Unrestricted Donations from Churches.  I have these as 2 seperate campaigns in Raiser's Edge and they correspond to Accounts in Quickbooks which is what our bookkeeper uses and which is where the budget is accessed. I reconcile incoming donations by Campaign every week with what is shown in Quickbooks. But if I run a Gift Summary Report by Campaign for the entire year, I am not matching what is in Quickbooks and it makes it very difficult for me to have a sane conversation about income coming in when I am not looking at the same numbers.  Currently I am only off by 7% but I have been off by much more in the past. We are a very small shop - part-time bookkeeper, 2 of us in Development. Does anyone have any suggestions for best practices throughout the year that would enable me to either 1) have records that are closer to the bookkeepers or 2) be able to quickly and accurately account for the discrepancies? I am not responsible for the fundraising but I think my supervisors would appreciate if I were on top of things enough to go to them with the info on how far behind we are.  Have you successfully used the goals feature in Raiser's Edge?  If I do that will I need to create a new campaign each fiscal year?

 Brenda Benson

Development Associate

Greenville Seminary

A) Funds should really be used to correspond to the bookeeper's numbers, not campaigns. Have you read Bill Connor's book Fundraising with the Raiser's Edge: a non-technical guide? It is the best at explaining best use of campaigns, funds and appeals. All your finance office needs to know and track is what restrictions, if any, did the donor put on the gift.

Campaigns are best used to set and track goals. If you set new goals every fiscal year then, yes, you will need to create new campaigns every year. This is most common however you can also have a multi year campaign set up and track toward one campaign for a few years. Your finance office should not care if the gift came from an individual or a church - your fundraising operations does. You most likely would benefit from having one "unrestricted" fund and keep the two campaigns that you are using.

C) How does the bookeeper know what to book? How do you know what gifts to enter? Are gifts going to finance or your office first? Do you reconcile monthly? You need to be reconciling regularly and identify the discrepancies quickly. If you have not been doing this then it will take you some time and you will need to do it month by month until today to find where the issues are.

D) Do you use Raiser's Edge's posting feature? Do you post the gifts which changes their posting status (reducing the editing ability on the gift) and send the posting report to your bookeeper (either the electronic file or the paper report)? This is really the recommended way to report to your finance office. It ensures that if you make any changes to said gifts, the changes have to be done via adjustment which will go into the next posting cycle so you are always both in sync (theoretically).

JoAnn Strommen

Melissa Graves:

A) Funds should really be used to correspond to the bookeeper's numbers, not campaigns. Have you read Bill Connor's book Fundraising with the Raiser's Edge: a non-technical guide? It is the best at explaining best use of campaigns, funds and appeals. All your finance office needs to know and track is what restrictions, if any, did the donor put on the gift.

Campaigns are best used to set and track goals. If you set new goals every fiscal year then, yes, you will need to create new campaigns every year. This is most common however you can also have a multi year campaign set up and track toward one campaign for a few years. Your finance office should not care if the gift came from an individual or a church - your fundraising operations does. You most likely would benefit from having one "unrestricted" fund and keep the two campaigns that you are using.

C) How does the bookeeper know what to book? How do you know what gifts to enter? Are gifts going to finance or your office first? Do you reconcile monthly? You need to be reconciling regularly and identify the discrepancies quickly. If you have not been doing this then it will take you some time and you will need to do it month by month until today to find where the issues are.

D) Do you use Raiser's Edge's posting feature? Do you post the gifts which changes their posting status (reducing the editing ability on the gift) and send the posting report to your bookeeper (either the electronic file or the paper report)? This is really the recommended way to report to your finance office. It ensures that if you make any changes to said gifts, the changes have to be done via adjustment which will go into the next posting cycle so you are always both in sync (theoretically).

Melissa's response seemed to cover it all.  I strongly second reconciling regularily.  If you do it weekly, you should be able to run monthly reports and not have any discrepancies.  Keep the reports as maybe things are getting changed after you reconcile.  Posting gifts even without FE is a great way to limit what can be changed in RE.