BBMS Transaction fees

Kathi Sacha

We are planning to start using OLX for online donations through our website.  Can anyone tell me how the BBMS fees are handled when recording the transaction in RE & intergrating the transactions into FE?

Robert McConnaughey

Kathi,


We have used OLX for the past three years +/-, here is the process we use


- within RE when linking the donations from OLX into a Constituent  Gift record it pulls the gross amount of the donation.  i.e $100.00

- BBMS settles the batch and credits our bank account less processing fees - i.e $97.14 (BBMS charges 2.598% + .26 per transaction)

- the gifts associated with the BBMS settlement batch are posted together in RE and subsequently into FE

- from the batch in FE I account for BBMS fees by a Debit to "Credit Card Fees" and Credit the "Bank Account"


the fees associated with accepting online donations are not charged against the donors giving, the fees are an administrative cost of doing business

 

Kathi Sacha

Robert McConnaughey:

Kathi,


We have used OLX for the past three years +/-, here is the process we use


- within RE when linking the donations from OLX into a Constituent  Gift record it pulls the gross amount of the donation.  i.e $100.00

- BBMS settles the batch and credits our bank account less processing fees - i.e $97.14 (BBMS charges 2.598% + .26 per transaction)

- the gifts associated with the BBMS settlement batch are posted together in RE and subsequently into FE

- from the batch in FE I account for BBMS fees by a Debit to "Credit Card Fees" and Credit the "Bank Account"


the fees associated with accepting online donations are not charged against the donors giving, the fees are an administrative cost of doing business

 

Robert,


Thanks so much for your answer.  That will work for us once we get OLX live.


Kathi

 

Steph Williams

Kathi Sacha:

We are planning to start using OLX for online donations through our website.  Can anyone tell me how the BBMS fees are handled when recording the transaction in RE & intergrating the transactions into FE?

Hi Kathi,

We always record the gross amount in RE. I run weekly reports for our fiscal team - the BBMS reconciliation report, and a matching gift upload report from RE.  They record the weekly net fee amount manually.  (Fees are paid from our operating budget, not deducted from the donor chosen fund.)

Apryl Bundy

Kathi Sacha:

Robert McConnaughey:

Kathi,


We have used OLX for the past three years +/-, here is the process we use


- within RE when linking the donations from OLX into a Constituent  Gift record it pulls the gross amount of the donation.  i.e $100.00

- BBMS settles the batch and credits our bank account less processing fees - i.e $97.14 (BBMS charges 2.598% + .26 per transaction)

- the gifts associated with the BBMS settlement batch are posted together in RE and subsequently into FE

- from the batch in FE I account for BBMS fees by a Debit to "Credit Card Fees" and Credit the "Bank Account"


the fees associated with accepting online donations are not charged against the donors giving, the fees are an administrative cost of doing business

 

Robert,


Thanks so much for your answer.  That will work for us once we get OLX live.


Kathi

 

Robert,


You mentioned "from the batch in FE I account for BBMS fees by a Debit to "Credit Card Fees" and Credit the "Bank Account" ".  How are you doing this?  Do you have to add a new line to account for the fee for each transaction? Right now we process our OLX transactions in RE.  Go logon to BBMS and get the breakdown of fees for every transaction, then we go to RE and select post our transactions to the GL,  It opens FE and from there it shows 2 lines for each transaction (a debit amount (gross) and a credit amount (gross).  We then change the debit amount to the net, add a line and insert the credit card fee as a debit amount.  This a quite time consuming for our accounting manager.   We are hoping there is a way to avoid manually entering the fees in FE.   And right now no fees are entered in RE. We record the gross amount in the gift amount field.

 

Shannon Williams 2

Hello -


We have the similar issue as Kathi and wondered if any solutions/suggestions. I am new to this organization and the  Business Office is not using FE which means each month we need to create a xcel report for them using the BBMS disbursement reports. We have several non profits using the same database so I need to tell them how much was brought in for each branch and the fees attached. This is incredibly time consuming and leaves a lot of room for error. Any suggestions.

Shannon Williams 2

Hello -


We have the similar issue as Kathi and wondered if any solutions/suggestions. I am new to this organization and the  Business Office is not using FE which means each month we need to create a xcel report for them using the BBMS disbursement reports. We have several non profits using the same database so I need to tell them how much was brought in for each branch and the fees attached. This is incredibly time consuming and leaves a lot of room for error. Any suggestions.

Susan McGrath

I gave BB 6 months of our credit card fee statements and they did a comparison - we saved a lot of money going through BBMS.