Excluding write offs from export

Anonymous Blackbaud User

My development director asked for a list of all 2014 donors and their gift amounts. I first did a query, and then ran that query through export. In the export, under output, I asked for constituent name and total gift amount. With total gift amount, I restricted the date to last calendar year, and asked for a starting amount of 0.01 in order to exclude gifts of zero. Under gift types, I chose everything except the write off and MG write off and with the checkboxes, selected exclude zero amount gifts, use sale amount for sold stock/property and use gift balance instead of gift amount.

The problem is the list I export includes gifts of zero amount made in 2014, which are write offs. Since I asked for these gifts to be excluded, why are they in my list? What am I missing?

Thank you.

JoAnn Strommen

Anonymous Blackbaud User:

My development director asked for a list of all 2014 donors and their gift amounts. I first did a query, and then ran that query through export. In the export, under output, I asked for constituent name and total gift amount. With total gift amount, I restricted the date to last calendar year, and asked for a starting amount of 0.01 in order to exclude gifts of zero. Under gift types, I chose everything except the write off and MG write off and with the checkboxes, selected exclude zero amount gifts, use sale amount for sold stock/property and use gift balance instead of gift amount.

The problem is the list I export includes gifts of zero amount made in 2014, which are write offs. Since I asked for these gifts to be excluded, why are they in my list? What am I missing?

Thank you.

Feeling your pain - sad to say you're not missing anything.  Per my experience anyway.

Have to generate list annually for YUSA for donors for previous year and list of new donors.  Run into the same thing - donors whose pledges have been written off appear on queries and reports.  One of BB support staff thought they had hit the answer by checking the use gift balance - yes it removed write offs but also removed anyone who had paid pledge in full.  Worked on this last week and earlier this week.

I ended up manually removing the gifts that were written off.  Last support person I worked with said that seemed to be the best option.  Unfortunate.  Because these records have a $0 gift/pledge they won't pull for future new donor reports either.  The way RE handles write-offs really leads to inaccurate reports for us.

There are several post on the discovery topics site about write offs.  Here's  link to the one I put on last week after much frustration. http://rediscovery.uservoice.com/forums/137015-raiser-s-edge-discovery-topics/suggestions/5675405-write-offs-do-not-count-in-gift-amount-or-as-re

 

Nicole S

JoAnn Strommen:

Feeling your pain - sad to say you're not missing anything.  Per my experience anyway.

Have to generate list annually for YUSA for donors for previous year and list of new donors.  Run into the same thing - donors whose pledges have been written off appear on queries and reports.  One of BB support staff thought they had hit the answer by checking the use gift balance - yes it removed write offs but also removed anyone who had paid pledge in full.  Worked on this last week and earlier this week.

I ended up manually removing the gifts that were written off.  Last support person I worked with said that seemed to be the best option.  Unfortunate.  Because these records have a $0 gift/pledge they won't pull for future new donor reports either.  The way RE handles write-offs really leads to inaccurate reports for us.

There are several post on the discovery topics site about write offs.  Here's  link to the one I put on last week after much frustration. http://rediscovery.uservoice.com/forums/137015-raiser-s-edge-discovery-topics/suggestions/5675405-write-offs-do-not-count-in-gift-amount-or-as-re

 

 I detest the way RE handles write-offs.  Even a simple query of donors who gave in a certain time frame can pull people with write-offs. 

Christine Cooke 2

Anonymous Blackbaud User:

My development director asked for a list of all 2014 donors and their gift amounts. I first did a query, and then ran that query through export. In the export, under output, I asked for constituent name and total gift amount. With total gift amount, I restricted the date to last calendar year, and asked for a starting amount of 0.01 in order to exclude gifts of zero. Under gift types, I chose everything except the write off and MG write off and with the checkboxes, selected exclude zero amount gifts, use sale amount for sold stock/property and use gift balance instead of gift amount.

The problem is the list I export includes gifts of zero amount made in 2014, which are write offs. Since I asked for these gifts to be excluded, why are they in my list? What am I missing?

Thank you.

 I ran into similar issues when doing reports for our auditors.  The Zero amount gifts needed to not show up and I was not supposed to do a whole bunch of manual manipulation.

 I run a Static Query with the Gift Date(s) and the Gift Types.  Important!  Yes - I see you said you excluded any Gift Type with Write Off in the name, but -- you must also exclude all Gift Types with In-Kind in the name.  For a lot of organizations those are also Zero amount gifts that will show up.

I also suggest, since you said you are using Export, to utilize the gift fields as a second filter.  Choose the Gift Type field in the export also