Year End Gift Processing-Financial Edge/Raiser's Edge

Daniel Kong 2

Could you share some best practices as to how to record gifts that are received after the end of the year (fiscal and calendar) but want the gift recorded for the previous calendar year, especially for those who utilize both Financial Edge and Raiser's Edge? One of the suggestions from an auditor was to book pledges in RE for gifts that come in after the year end so they will count toward the intended year. FE will have the correct gift date for bank reconciling purposes, and RE can pull on the pledge for reporting purposes. This does cause additional gift entry which I feel is not efficient.

Jen Claudy

We don't have FE, but our Finance Dept is able to deposit gifts in July then do a Journal Entry to move it back to June.  This happens pretty much every month, actually, but end of CY and FY are particularly important.  We don't have a high volume of gifts, so Journal Entries are made for each gift separately, however, if there is a large volume, one entry will be made for a lump sum, with a notation in the finance software to reference RE for the detail.  Then a note is included on each applicable gift (either in the Reference field or as a Gift Note)...since it is much easier to include notes in RE than in our finance software.



In RE, we enter the Gift Date as the postmark date on the gift, and that's the date used for the acknowledgement letter and tax receipt letter.  We use the Receipt Date to show the deposit date and the GL Post Date to record the appropriate date for reporting purposes.  So a gift that is postmarked 29 Jun and deposited 02 Jul will have a Gift Date of 6/29/2015, a Receipt Date of 7/2/2015, and GL Post Date of 6/30/2015 (to show that it really belongs in Jun/FY15).  Our reports all run off of the Post Date.



Hope this helps...I agree, entering pledges and payments is a lot of additional, unnecessary data entry.  Plus, it could, depending on how your processes are setup, create problems with other things (like listing the donor under Pledges in a donor recognition list or sending them a letter referencing a pledge and/or payment instead of a gift).

JoAnn Strommen

To me you've done a key thing already - ask your auditor.  We do have RE & FE. 



I'm not sure why they would say to enter a pledge, why not just enter the gift if you're doing that type of creative accounting? I don't get involved in the FE side but I know they do make some Journal adjustment entries to note money received at end of Year 1 that is for annual fund of Year 2.  Dong the reverse sounds a bit questionable.  If the money was received in Year 2, even if we wanted it to have been received in Year 1, is recorded in Year 2.  Having a pledge doesn't change that for us.



Jennifer's use of dates obviously works for them, to me it sounds a bit messy. (Postmark date for gift date at end of calendar year only is reliable if not metered mail and not a credit card payment.)



Keep working with your auditor for what they are okay with.  Have already seen big differences between what one auditor does vs. another for our org.

David Weaver

We record the gifts received after month end on the last day of the previous month in a separate batch that has only prior months gifts in it.  It results in an extra deposit(s) and a deposit(s) in transit on the bank rec but there are no extra journal entries or anything like that to do. It has worked well for us.

Katherine Popowich

When we have a hard close like a fiscal year end or the calendar year change we look at the post marks on our envelopes to determine when the donor actually was intending on making the donation. So if for example the envelope is marked for January 6,2015 however the cheque is dated December 31,2014 we know that the donation hit Canada Post in January and would not be intitled to the December Receipt so all revenues would be coded to January and not December. We also keep all envelopes as well as forms for about a week or two after the hard close. During this time frame we could have 2 different batches one for the previous month and one for the current month. I will also prepare an email that will be sent off to Finance at the end of the current month informing them of which Deposits went into the Previous month as they will need to redo the previous month's bank rec once everything has been posted over.

Theresa Brown

We also go by postmark date at the end of the calendar year and at the end of the fiscal year.  Development processes additional batches using the year-end date in RE and we post them back to that date in FE as well.  We are integrated between RE and FE, so it is a very straightforward process.  The two departments touch base and make sure we have everything posted before we close the prior period in question.

Daniel Kong 2

I am not too familiar with Financial Edge, but it is my understanding that in order for Financial Edge to reconcile with Raiser's Edge, gifts need to be recorded as a receivable in either system. Since Raiser's Edge is not an accounting database, I would assume this should happen on the FE side of things. For users who have RE and FE, is this accurate? 

JoAnn Strommen

I basically work only with the RE side.  I enter a pledge in RE.  In the fund setup, the different gift types are set up with appropriate GL account #s.  The account # is different for a cash gift vs. a pledge.  So when all is posted over to FE, pledges automatically go into GL account for accounts receivable.



Does that answer your question?