Lockbox Donation Processing

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My organization is thinking of moving to a lockbox where all of our donations would be sent. I've been asked to research gift entry policies/procedures specific to using a lockbox. Does anyone have a policy they would be willing to share? 


Thank you!
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  • Michelle Gundrum:

    My organization is thinking of moving to a lockbox where all of our donations would be sent. I've been asked to research gift entry policies/procedures specific to using a lockbox. Does anyone have a policy they would be willing to share? 


    Thank you!

    We use lockbox for virtually all of our direct mail solicitations (all other donations are still directed to our main address). I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but here are some salient points:


    1.) We have a gift batch template for lockbox gifts. The most important feature of this template is it sets the gift subtype to "Lockbox," which helps us differentiate the source of the gift insofar as accounting and reconciliation goes.

    2.) For us, we typically do not see the actual post mark date for these gifts because envelopes are not included with the material delivered to us by the bank (we only ask for the actual DM donation slip so we can see constituent ID, appeal ID, and package ID). Because of this, gift date is always the same as the GL post date. 


    Um, I guess that's about it honestly. Lockbox mostly makes life easier for your accounting office. Gift entry still more or less happens the same as it would otherwise, with the exception that our DM gifts are all conveniently bundled together, which makes gift entry super quick. Nothing like speeding through a lockbox batch, only having to enter constituent ID, amount, letter code (if you use lots of different letter types for different appeals), appeal and package. You can make all other fields invisible on your batch, including gift date and GL post date because you can set that up as default values when you initially set the batch up. 

  • Dear All – We have been considering it too –
    so thanx for the insight!  The one thing we have asked for
    though, is to have access to the scanned images of the return slips
    in case there are any hand written corrections or notes which we do
    get on a regular basis.  Is that how you handle personal
    notes?  OR do you get all paper back-up sent to you? 
    karen

     

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  • We get all of the paper that was in the envelope, apart from the check. Most of the time, this means just the paper direct mail slips, which contain donor addressee & address, constituent ID, appeal ID, and package ID, which are the only meaningful fields for us (campaign and fund are predetermined for these kinds of gifts). But if the donor included any hand written notes on separate paper, we get that as well, which happens fairly frequently.


    We also have access to the scanned copies of every check, just in case there's something truly confusing, which comes in handy maybe 5 or 6 times a year. 

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