Write-Offs

Tammy Bristol · November 2016

Am I the only one that is frustrated by the fact that Write-Offs do not show up in the Gift List? It seems they should be listed there, in red, to show that they were essentially subtracted. Am I missing something? Is there a way to see them?

Thanks,

Tammy

JoAnn Strommen · November 2016

No you are not the only one frustrated by how write offs are handled in RE. There are some posts on the ideas page about requested changes. The inaccuracy it creates on a donor record are frustrating - write off amount is shown as collected.

Daniel Noga 2 · November 2016

It bugs me too! I was having trouble once getting a gift export to reconcile with what Finance had in their records, and the problem boiled down to a Write-off I had no idea existed. I also had no idea it was actually a Gift Type, which is really counter-intuitive (it's actually kind of an un-gift, no?), and one would naturally think that something that counted as a Gift Type would appear...y'know...with the Gifts?

I don't remember this being covered in my training.

I opened a case with Customer Support and when it was discovered that was the issue, I felt really stupid, and I felt bad for wasting so much of the Customer Service rep's time on something like that.

Beth Romano · November 2016

Daniel Noga:

It bugs me too! I was having trouble once getting a gift export to reconcile with what Finance had in their records, and the problem boiled down to a Write-off I had no idea existed. I also had no idea it was actually a Gift Type, which is really counter-intuitive (it's actually kind of an un-gift, no?), and one would naturally think that something that counted as a Gift Type would appear...y'know...with the Gifts?

I don't remember this being covered in my training.

I opened a case with Customer Support and when it was discovered that was the issue, I felt really stupid, and I felt bad for wasting so much of the Customer Service rep's time on something like that.

If you go to legends in user options you can have gifts that have write off's on them stand out.

Joanne Felci 2 · November 2016

Thanks for that reminder Beth - always forget about the Legend

Jennifer Lucarelli · November 2016

I'm confused... I actually do have write offs marked in BOLD RED in my legend, but I do not see this reflected in a constituent's gift record. am I missing a step?

Joanne Felci 2 · November 2016

Jennifer - are they red within a gift batch or did you set them to be red via the legend within the gift tab of the constitutent record? You also need to set the one that has Pledge Write Off (if that is what you want to be shown as red) instead of just Write Off

Jennifer Lucarelli · November 2016

ok.... I'm only referring to viewing these in the constituents gift record, not in a gift batch. but within that legend, I have write-offs in BOLD RED, and I just added the Pledge with write offs option in Bold Red, and I still see none of the write off detail on the gift tab of the constituent record. :-(

Elizabeth Rich · November 2016

Write offs are included in the Gfit Detail and Summary report, even if you request no write offs. It is frustrating.

Tatyana Leifman · November 2016

It gets "better" with write-offs: if you do not specifically exclude them from a query checking for acknowledgment status, they'll show up as "Not Acknowledged" gifts but try as I might I couldn't find where one can change the designation to "Do Not Acknowledge." I just couldn't figure out where that field resides in a write-off. The pledge that was partially written-off, in my case, is marked as "Do Not Acknowledge." So why that didn't carry to the write-off is beyond me.

Jen Claudy · November 2016

With regard to the Legend, the order matters, so try moving Pledge With Write Offs toward the top of the list...above Pledge at least...and see if that works. I think you also need to open a Gift after changing the Legend settings to see them.

As far as the Acknowledgement Status, I believe what it's showing is the Ack Status of the original Pledge.

I would love to see Write Offs as an actual first-class Gift Record like a Pay-Cash, that shows with a negative amount. Then shows a $0 balance on the Pledge maybe showing as $0* to indicate that part of that balance was written off. It's a complicated change, because it would affect how a lot of reports work, not to mention a lot of exports & queries, etc. that a lot of us are using. But long-term, it would be so much better/easier.

Tammy Bristol · November 2016

Jen Claudy:

I would love to see Write Offs as an actual first-class Gift Record like a Pay-Cash, that shows with a negative amount. Then shows a $0 balance on the Pledge maybe showing as $0* to indicate that part of that balance was written off. It's a complicated change, because it would affect how a lot of reports work, not to mention a lot of exports & queries, etc. that a lot of us are using. But long-term, it would be so much better/easier.

Thanks for all your input, everyone. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one having issues. Jen, I agree that having Write-Offs handled that way would be SOOOO much easier for us RE admins!

Tammy

Michelle Kolak · November 2016

Tammy Bristol:

Jen Claudy:

I would love to see Write Offs as an actual first-class Gift Record like a Pay-Cash, that shows with a negative amount. Then shows a $0 balance on the Pledge maybe showing as $0* to indicate that part of that balance was written off. It's a complicated change, because it would affect how a lot of reports work, not to mention a lot of exports & queries, etc. that a lot of us are using. But long-term, it would be so much better/easier.

Thanks for all your input, everyone. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one having issues. Jen, I agree that having Write-Offs handled that way would be SOOOO much easier for us RE admins!

Tammy

What we ended up doing was adding an attribute to the pledge for the total of the write-offs. What is really annoying is that if you write off a pledge with installments, there was a write-off for every unpaid installment. We needed a total amount for each pledge.

Susan Chomsky · November 2016

Tammy Bristol:

Am I the only one that is frustrated by the fact that Write-Offs do not show up in the Gift List? It seems they should be listed there, in red, to show that they were essentially subtracted. Am I missing something? Is there a way to see them?

Thanks,

Tammy

I add a note to the reference line "Write off balance of $52.50 applied 10/21/16. The legend allows for itallics which is what I apply for write-offs.

Donna Mortensen · December 2016

I add a note to the reference line "Write off balance of $52.50 applied 10/21/16. The legend allows for itallics which is what I apply for write-offs.

Great idea! We run a Global Write-off of old unpaid annual fund pledges (from the Administration tab) so we wouldn't be able to specify the balance in the reference field, however, I'm thinking we could do a global change to add "write off" to the reference line based on a query of gift type 'write-off' for the date we ran the global write-off. It looks like we can choose to "add" to the reference field. I'll test it first to make sure it doesn't knock out text that's already in that field. I wouldn't have thought to see if we could do a global add to the reference line if I hadn't seen your comment, so thanks!

Donna Mortensen · December 2016

Donna Mortensen:

I add a note to the reference line "Write off balance of $52.50 applied 10/21/16. The legend allows for itallics which is what I apply for write-offs.

Great idea! We run a Global Write-off of old unpaid annual fund pledges (from the Administration tab) so we wouldn't be able to specify the balance in the reference field, however, I'm thinking we could do a global change to add "write off" to the reference line based on a query of gift type 'write-off' for the date we ran the global write-off. It looks like we can choose to "add" to the reference field. I'll test it first to make sure it doesn't knock out text that's already in that field. I wouldn't have thought to see if we could do a global add to the reference line if I hadn't seen your comment, so thanks!

**UPDATE**

I took the time to run a test on the global change function to add "write off" into the reference field. It doesn't work unless you REPLACE the info that's already in the reference field. We use the reference field for other purposes, so as of this writing the global change won't work for us. We're going to continue to have problems knowing whether or not a 'payment' is a payment or a write-off unless we enter every write-off individually so that we can add (instead of replace) info in the reference field.

Jen Claudy · December 2016

Can you use a field other than Reference? I have a Gift Subtype of "Write-Off" so I can easily see which Gifts have a write-off without digging in.

Write-Offs

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