RE as subledger for third party accounting app

Jed Coffin

We'd like to use Raiser's Edge as the detail subledger for our third party G/L.

Gift detail would be captured in Raiser's Edge, and summary exports of batches entered are then generated to support JE's into the G/L.

Does anyone use RE in this capacity at this point? Do you have recommendations regarding best practices?

I'm thinking of a number of questions :

Can one "Close" prior periods or previously entered batches against further editing?

Is there a "Data changes" dataset that I can tap, exporting detail, by login, of changes made to previously entered records?

How does one guard against all those actions (deleting gifts, changing coding, backdating new data after receonciliations have been completed, etc.) that non-accountants wouldn't think twice about doing, but which could completely compromise a closed reconciliation?

Thanks for any perspective you may have.

JFC

Cathleen Mai

Can one "Close" prior periods or previously entered batches against further editing?

   You can mark the gifts as "Posted to the GL" on the second tab of the Gift record. This can be done manually or by global change.

   Once marked as posted, gifts can only be adjusted not just changed.
Is there a "Data changes" dataset that I can tap, exporting detail, by login, of changes made to previously entered records?

   Unfortunately there is no history of changes in Raisers edge, you can only see who was the last person that changed something in the record. Zeidman offers a software called Audit Trail that you might want to look into.
How does one guard against all those actions (deleting gifts, changing coding, backdating new data after receonciliations have been completed, etc.)

You can limit access trough security settings under Admin/ Security and create user groups depending on their scope of work.


Hope this helps.


 

JoAnn Strommen

Your proposed use of RE for accounting purposes doesn't sit well with me personally. RE is not accounting software.


Users can enter any gift date, mark gift as not posted or posted. Posted gifts can be adjusted and depending on how adjustment is entered (date, checkbox) it may or may not post the way you would desire.  There's not really a way to 'close' per accounting definition. There isn't really a way beyond limiting access to prevent changes to records. There is also a plug-in that a user may have that allows gifts to be "un-posted" - once unposted, gifts can be edited and/or deleted. You'd need to be sure no one has that access.


Yes, Cathleen, just posted a response. Some of the same points I was going to raise so will stop here.



 

Jed Coffin

Thank you richly, JoAnn and Cathleen, for your comments. Very helpful indeed.

I have noted the "open" nature of RE's datasets. However, I'll continue to resist the conclusion that RE cannot be used as a subledger for an accounting package.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but without some ongoing, app-driven or policy/procedural mechanism to tie the two datasets together, I'm not seeing how an org would be able to produce detailed gift support for G/L balances during a FYE audit, without maintaining parallel detail systems, one in RE, and another one across the hall in the G/L, both neeeding to be synchronized periodically through intensive internal reconciliations. My mind is reeling at the redundancy of effort such a system would seem to engender.

Again, thank you both! I appreciate your thoughts. I'm confident there's a solution to this challenge out there, and you have both provided glimpses into aspects that will need to be considered.

Best!

Jed