Reporting correct totals when a pledge falls on multiple FYs

The separate pledges solution is what first came to mind for me, and I think it is likely to be your only bet if you absolutely need the gift coding to be different across the respective fiscal years. To my understanding, even though Installments get entered as bona fide gifts of the type Pay-Cash, they automatically pick up the coding of the original pledge once applied to it (regardless of what you may have entered prior to taking that step) and this cannot be altered. All installments will end up being coded the same even if they spill over into a different FY.

Agreed. We count the entire pledge amount as income in the year the pledge was made. Obviously, this makes our year-to-year income reporting bounce up and down between capital campaign and non-campaign years, quite drastically. It works for us, however, because if we need a more balanced report for anticipated revenue, we simply use the canned Cash Flow reports to project pledge payments over the next several years. It is advantageous to book the pledge in its first fiscal year, especially, if you are trying to meet a challenge grant for a campaign and need to show the revenue accrued within a certain span of months.


If you must have the pledge payments reported as income in the years the payments are actually received, I would agree that using a recurring gift template or splitting it into two pledges is probably best. We will do this on very rare occasion if the pledge is made to our annual appeal, rather than our capital campaign. (Donor says she wants to give $5,000 over 5 years, but the appeal is annual, so we enter one $1,000 to each successive annual appeal, for example.) This allows us to include her on our special segmented mailing for "Last Year's Appeal-Givers" once her pledge is ended, instead of it looking as though she has not give to our current appeal for 5 years. The drawback to this, though, is if you use Pledge Reminder notices (for people who mail in monthly checks), and the donor sees a "pledge balance" that does not make sense to her. ("Why does my reminder say I only have a $800 balance when I pledged $5,000?") So it really depends on the type of fundraising, donor cultivation, and accounting situation that you employ.

You are recording it correctly.  If you want to look at what is expected within the fiscal year you need to look at the Cash Flow Report.  That will calculate the math on what portion of the pledge is coming in what year.

I agree with those who have said that it really depends on how your org counts gifts, whether you need to reconcile with your Finance Dept, etc.  We count the entire pledge in the year that it is made.  Actually...if we were counting Revenue Received, we'd run reports on Pay-Cash Gifts rather than Pledge Gifts, so I would still enter one Pledge and use a split gift where needed.


Sometimes (particularly with Board members) we need to show different Appeals on the same pledge.  So a board member pledges $5k over the next 5 years.  I enter it as a split gift with a different Appeal for each year, although the Campaign & Fund is the same (for us, at least).  The problem comes when the payments are entered, because RE automatically assumes that the first $1k payment should be split 5 ways according to the split gift instructions.  So each year, you have to remember to edit (essentially remove) the split gift on the payment Gift Record.


You could use Recurring Gifts, provided you don't (and won't) need to reconcile with Finance or count the entire pledge in the year it was made.  I wouldn't do this, because we do reconcile (monthly for cash and in even months for Pledge receivables), and it would cause a big headache there.  I do have a (different) board member with a monthly recurring credit card gift, but no actual pledge.  For this one, when the FY turns over, I need to remember to open the Recurring Gift Record and change the Appeal, or else all RG Pmts will be entered with the details of the RG itself, which is not what I want.  For us, the Recurring Gift Record is just a template, and the RG Pay-Cash is what counts in reports, etc.


For the volume of cases like these (not high at all) it's not worth the complication of an automated process.  I generally know the donors and situations well enough and if I miss something, it's usually discovered either while reconciling with Finance or running Development reports.  Documenting (for once outside of RE) would be a good idea...just in case the one person who knows what's what (or just which constituents have an unusual situation) gets hit by a bus and someone else has to take over.