May's Stuff You Need to Know Forum Contest!

JoAnn Strommen:

My best tip for pledges/recurring gifts is to use auto generate transactions in batch.  Very useful to me for monthly EFT pledge payments and monthly recurring gifts.  Switched to using this after using a recurring batch.  Auto generate is easier and less work!

Yes, we do.  Sorry didn't think about it being part of that module so not everyone has function as I use it for batches that are not EFTs.  But it is a fav.


For basic features, I do like the ability on batch set up to create a default payment schedule.  Don't use very often but quite handy when entering staff pledges for payroll deductions and I can use it as my default for them.  It's somewhat hidden and overlooked.

This prevents duplicate payments from pulling into the auto-generated eft batch.

Yes!  I always click the "Duplicate Search" button in a batch before I create the transmission file to charge credit cards.  

Our organization has been encouraging monthly recurring gifts by Direct Debit for a number of years - we now have nearly a 1000 gifts per month like this and about 150/month by credit card. Many of these donations are "smaller" donations of $30 to $100/month....but they all add up!! Our preference is the Direct Debit donations because they run very consistently without issues that credit cards have like expiration dates and compromised credit cards.


I use the EFT Module and Automatically Generate Payments each month - VERY helpful!!. We run separate separate batches for our DD and CC donations, because it makes it easier to reconcile the payments when I record the deposits in Quickbooks. 


We also use email receipts and highly encourage them for all of our donors on EFT - it saves me hours and hours each month printing and preparing receipts for mailing in addition to saving lots of paper and postage!! 


I use the Cash Flow reports for our recurring gifts to help project income for each year.


Since I am the only one in the finance office - tools like this make it possible for me to process all of our donations each month!!

 

David Springer:

Thanks for the great tips, everyone! 


We recently posted a poll about Stuff You Need to Know, and we'd love to receive everyone's feedback. Our goal is to help all RE users become RE masters, so let us know how we can make it better in the future!

Lauren Schler:

Your post brought up a question I’ve been wondering about. I had read at one point that you are rolling out a third credential exam for bCRE-Master. Do you have any information about that that you could share? I looked in Training Central the other day and couldn’t find anything on that.

 

Thanks!