Entering Donation into RE

Kim Govier

Good afternoon,


I was wondering what other organization do for gift entry dates. Do you use the date of the check, (which could result in multiple batches)? Date you receive?


Also, when pulling acknowledgement letters, do you use gift date or check date?


We have been having a heavy discussion about this, so I thought I would poll others to see what your practice/procedure is.


Thanks a bunch!

Kim

JoAnn Strommen

Our gift date is the date the money is deposited/hits bank account. This is also post date so reconciling is much cleaner.  A batch can include multiple deposits. I note the dep date in the description.  (Our only exception to this is entry of staff and board pledges for the upcoming year. Entered with current date as gift date, Dec.X , and post date as 1/1/XX. Our fiscal year is calendar year, payroll deductions begin in Jan so less records to deal with/carry over in accounting at end of year.)


I personally have little value for date on check. Not all gifts are via check. We have direct debits, credit card, and online payments. Person can write any date, sometimes incomplete...


The only date in our acknowledgments is the date of the letter. It's not required to have anything more so my philosophy has always been keep it simple. 


I'm sure you're having an interesting discussion. 

Kari Bird

Hello,


I second JoAnn.  We use the deposit date as the gift date.  Our batch template includes check date, but I don't use it in my letters.  I also only use the date of the letter; we don't include gift date on our acknowledgments.


Fortunately we receive a manageable volume of gifts -- we usually make the deposit and do the batch entry all on the same day.


Hope this helps.

Ryan Hyde

I'm mostly with JoAnn on this one. 99.9% of the time, gift date and deposit (GL Post Date) date are identical. My only exception is gifts that come in through the mail at the end of the year which have post office processing dates on the envelope for December but which are not deposited in our accounts until January. The IRS guidance is that any charitable donation that has a post mark date of a given year is valid for that year, regardless of when it is deposited by the recipient. So we end up with 4 or 5 weird batches in early January (I'm actually finishing processing those gifts today), but since the exact date doesn't really make any difference to the donor at any other time of year, we just streamline the process and make all dates match for a given batch.

Catherine Burns 2

We use GL Post Date as the deposit date / date it hits our bank account. This is the date used for reconciliations.


For mailed donations the Gift Date is the date we received the mailed item, so at busy times may be a day or two before the GL Post Date. This is the date that will appear on the receipt so at end of tax year time we can make it the post mark date if required but keep the GL Post date as the deposit date. This is also useful for third party site donations e.g. Everyday Hero. The gift date is the date the donor made the donation through the site, but the GL Post Date is the date we received the funds from the site.

Otherwise the Gift Date = GL Post Date.


We record the cheque date in the cheque date field.

Tiffany Schroyer

I use the date that we receive the donation, but we do not have Raisers Edge linked to Financial Edge.

I only use batches when I have a lot of pledges or donations to enter, otherwise, I enter them individually.

I verify the constituent data during the entry, so it is easier for me to do it individually.