Using Gift Detail and Summary Report to get YTD figures from prior FY

There are multiple (up to four) columns in the Gift Detail and Summary, and there's a Gift Types filter for each column.  You need to separate out Pledges and Payments into separate columns, or else count either one or the other, not both.

Right there with you Denise! 


Where I used to work, we reported on "committed" gifts - Hard cash and Stock (No payments) and full amount for Pledge and MG Pledge. We then did a separate report of actual cash-in-the-door (cash, stock and all pledge pays.) That was easy and, to me, very accurate.

In my current position they always ran the reports the way you are describing with these columns:
Column 1: All Cash (including payments)
Column 2: All stock (including payments)
Column 3: Pledge balance
Column 4: MG Pledge balance

The problem with this is If you received a $5,000 pledge in FY15, with a $1,000 payment in FY 15, your final FY15 report will count $5,000. $1,000 in the All Cash Column and $4,000 in the Pledge Balance column.

The next payment comes in FY16, so shows in the  All cash column as $1,000 - which is double counting since that $1,000 was included in the FY15 Pledge Balance. Then, when you run your FY15 report for comparison, the number will be lower because the pledge balance will only be $3,000.


I can't get this through their heads ("that's the way we've always done it") and they want to keep doing it this way.  HELP!

Ditto with you Patti. Under previous management, our reports were run including pledges and pledge payments both, and the pledge payments were included in the cash column. I guess the idea was that it showed total transactions processed by our department - how much activity. But it does double-count revenue. When I explained this to our new Dev Director, he decided to switch to a one-or-the-other system for our fiscal year revenue reporting.


When we run the report, we only use two columns:

Cash & stocks (Cash, Stocks, Recurring gift pay-cash)

New Pledges (Pledge, MG-Pledge)


On the other hand, for reconciling with our Business Office, we do run a separate monthly report to include a column for pledges and pledge payments each, so we can reconcile all transactions processed that month:

Cash & stocks (cash, stocks, recurring gift pay-cash)

Pledge payments (pay-cash, pay-stock, pay-other)

New Pledges (Pledge) using full gift amount