Booking Pledges with Accounting/Finance

Cameron Alzubi 2

Hello! 


Currently, my fundraising department only 'books'/'posts' pledges that are multi-year. In an effort towards reconciliation, I am suggesting that we book/post ALL pledges. Even verbal pledges. Does your organization have any policy around this? Our accounting department wants all pledges in writing. 


What is your practice? Is there a threshold of a pledge of a certain amount that requires documentation? 


Any and all input is appreciated! 


Thanks! 

Karen Stuhlfeier

Our finance office does not consider annual pledges unless they are 10,000 or more. I do book smaller ones if I have documentation, but finance doesn't look at them.


For our capital campaign an actual pledge is only booked if we have paperwork. We do book verbal pledges, but keep them separate by using a specifically named campaign like: Campaign Phase II Verbal Pledges. When we receive the paperwork for these pledges we adjust the verbal to $0 and enter a real pledge. It is easy to exclude the verbal campaign from reporting and we also can report on it separately.Our finance director is very happy with this process.

JoAnn Strommen

All our documented pledges are entered and posted to accounting. We do not enter verbal pledges into RE with one exception and it caused an issue when auditor as part of audit process contacted the donor. Donor said final million of pledge was conditional and should not have been considered pledged. He thought we had paperwork to that effect. Unfortunately, complete 'verbal' pledge was entered, with protests from me, at CEOs direction so it would show on all his campaign reports. Fortunately they are a rare situation for us.


I'd definitely suggest a separate fund/campaign or something similar to record verbals.

Kristine Lemons

Auditors require documentation for pledges - if it's not in writing, I don't ask accounting to book it and I don't enter it into Raiser's Edge. (Extra tip: I keep my campaign pledges organized in a binder and locked in a safe, but I maintain a copy of all pledges in a second binder. Last year, during audit time, I just handed them the binder of copies to review and everything checked out with no questions or concerns. I did the same thing at an organization with monthly direct mail appeals, to review for restricted versus unrestricted giving. It makes my life easier!) 


What I have ended up doing is maintaining a list of "soft gift" - i.e. verbal pledges - in an Excel spreadsheet, because that's the format my campaign volunteers are most comfortable with.

Angie Kemp

 

In order to book a pledge with Finance, we have to have a pledge form that outlines clear details of said pledge or an email with that information. In other words, we have to have backup documentation in writing for our auditors. However, all pledges we "book" aren't booked with Finance. There are pledges that Finance doesn't consider a pledge, but in Development we want to capture that information. We enter them as pledges in Raiser's Edge, but use a "pledge not posted" subtype on the gift record, so those pledges are excluded from our reconciling with Finance. Those are pledges that are strictly for us downstairs in Development. Also, the auditors don't audit our database, only Finance's books. So this works for us. Hope you find a solution!

Heather MacKenzie

Cameron Alzubi:

Hello! 


Currently, my fundraising department only 'books'/'posts' pledges that are multi-year. In an effort towards reconciliation, I am suggesting that we book/post ALL pledges. Even verbal pledges. Does your organization have any policy around this? Our accounting department wants all pledges in writing. 


What is your practice? Is there a threshold of a pledge of a certain amount that requires documentation? 


Any and all input is appreciated! 


Thanks! 

Our accounting department will not book anything as a pledge that is not written out and signed, detailed for payment expectations, etc.  However, we also do have occasion to book "pledges" into RE that fall outside this criteria.  We use the gift subtype to differentiate them, such as employee pledges that are for one year of payroll deductions, so that they can be pulled out of reports, queries, etc., but I wish there was a gift type of something like "expectancy" to handle items like this that we all need to track, but aren't considered "real" pledges.

Claudia Sauers

In a previous organization we booked all pledges, including some less "formal" pledges, such as agreement to a one year pledge during a meeting, however in that instance I required the gift officer to put all of the details of the pledge in writing to me via e-mail so that I had a record of why it was recorded. Finance did not mind this so long as we followed up with any outstanding pledges in a timely manner and wrote them off if necessary.