How to track service fee in proposal

Could you give us an example of exactly what you're talking about? I'm not totally clear on what it is you're trying to track and why you're trying to track it. Also, how is your director using the prospect tab presently? 

I have two ways of approaching this:


1.) Do you have Financial Edge? If you do, that has a whole billing system in it, and there's no need at all to have this info in RE if you have FE to handle that side of your business. It seems strange to me to handle billing in RE, but that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't do it. Every org is different. Still, see if you're just making your life more complicated by trying to track this information in RE.


2.) If you do think it needs to be tracked in RE, then I'm going to counter one of your assumptions here and argue that you should track this stuff in the gift tab as pledges.


Now, these are definitely not gifts, so I'm with you there. But they are a financial transaction, they help to define the relationship you have with other organizations, and they are an important revenue stream. 


What I would do is create a campaign and fund for these types of transactions. At my org (an animal shelter), I have a campaign that is just called "Fee for Service." Anything that is not a gift (think dog training classes and that kind of thing) gets recorded as fee for service. I also give these transactions a type of 'other' (as opposed to 'cash') to help distinguish them from more traditional gits. The goal with both of these distinguishing features is to help make sure people know what they're looking at when they see the gifts tab, and also to make sure non-gift information is not included in any year-end summary tax letter.


In reality, the only thing that comes close to a billing system in RE is the pledge system. So create a pledge, set it up with the 'fee for service' (or whatever) campaign, and any payments that come in call pay-other instead of pay-cash. And since the thing originates as a gift, you can send payment reminders just like you would send pledge reminders. All the tools there - no need to reinvent anything.


I wouldn't mess with the prospect tab at all.

I'm glad I could help And I hope you'll post more questions here in the future - there are lots of great regulars on here with a lot of diverse points of view.