Credit Card Fees in RE and FE

You enter the full gift amount - your finance office books the fees to a bank fee account. They just need to access whatever report tells them the fees incurred.

 Yes, this has always been up to the finace department to figure out at all of the organizations I've worked at. We enter the full gift and finance has to justify the credit card fees in their database.

I agree with all posts Total income in RE. This following may be helpful to some: 


We are integrated with FE and we use BBMS, so when I get notification that a disbursement has been made, I post all the credit card gifts for the "report period" to FE in summary.  Prior to POSTING in FE, I adjust the journal reference field for the deposits, and note the NET of the deposit.  I also make all the post dates equal to the disbursement date.  This helps our finance office tremendously when they are reconcilling the bank statement.


We also have a recurring batch in FE that is "credit card fees" and I create a batch for those fees right after I've posted from RE to FE to reflect the fees for the same "report period" and also make the post date the same as the disbursement date of the deposits - this also helps in bank rec.

Karen Knisely:

Dear Colleagues!  Let me start by saying that we have both RE and FE and we are tied together.  We have one credit card processing company that takes out the processing fees BEFORE they deposit the money into our Bank account.  So the donor gives us $100 but we receive only $97.  We want to enter ONE donation on the personal record at $100 but this will NOT reconcile to Finance.  We do not want to enter two entries on the donor record - like $97.00 and then $3.00 which would confuse the staff and create incorrect reports.  We have not in the past EVER entered split gifts - but that might be the only way to go?  Any ideas or tricks?   thank you!  Karen Knisely- Moses Brown School

No matter the CC fees.  The donor should get credit for the $100.  The fees are the cost of doing business and should not be entered as a separate item or even noted in RE.  That is something that your Finance department has to reconcile. 

We have both sides. Our processor bills for credit card fees so we get the full amount of the donation. But we have a couple recurring donors that set up with eCheck years ago and the processor will deduct from those before depositing the funds into the account.  We enter the full amount of the donation into RE and accounting makes an adjustment on their side for the fees. 

Karen, you can add another vote if you need it for full donation amount in RE, fees handled by finance.  Totally agree with posts to that effect.


It's no different than your constituents paying for programs, memberships, trinkets through other departments using a credit card.  Finance should be dealing with all in a similar manner.

We also record the full amount of the donation to the donor's record. Fees are recorded as an expense.

We do the same.