Notification of ACH Payments

Claudia Sauers · March 2018

How does your finance department notify you of ACH donations? For the most part we receive e-mails from the distributer notifying us of an incoming payment but sometimes we get disbursements with no warning, how does that get communicated to your development team for gift entry?

Nicole Holt · March 2018

Claudia Sauers:

How does your finance department notify you of ACH donations? For the most part we receive e-mails from the distributer notifying us of an incoming payment but sometimes we get disbursements with no warning, how does that get communicated to your development team for gift entry?

If we do not receive emails from the distributor notifying us, Finance will notify Development when they are reviewing bank statements. Our fail-safe is a monthly reconciliation between Raiser's Edge and Finance, which I don't think is ideal (we want to know right away so we can kick off the acknowledgement/stewardship process!). The more we work with this system, though, the smoother it becomes--it's just not as smooth as a check in the mail with a letter saying what the gift is for/who it is from.

Gracie Schild · April 2018

Hi - at my former organization, the Foundation had its own Authorize.net account and we set up every transaction to generate an email receipt to the office. Overlaid on that was a Wufoo form on the website that the donor filled out first, and that included the designation. That Wufoo form could be directed to whomever we wanted. Basically, without a Wufoo form AND an Authorize.net receipt, we wouldn't process the gift, and one ot the other coming in alone would trigger a search.

If you're using Authorize.net or something similar on your website, you can definitely adjust who receives the receipts - and I'd suggest both Finance AND Development get each one.

Gracie Schild

Bluebird Business Services

Santa Fe NM

Susan Chomsky · April 2018

Hi, Our Finance team prints out the ACH report from the bank on the 15th and 30th of each month. The entries are batch entered to RE with the ACH transfer date and acknowledged appropriately. Finding donor information from the bank report can be challenging as the info provided is limited. Websites and phone calls are typically a part of accurate entry.

Jennifer Lange · April 2018

Claudia Sauers:

How does your finance department notify you of ACH donations? For the most part we receive e-mails from the distributer notifying us of an incoming payment but sometimes we get disbursements with no warning, how does that get communicated to your development team for gift entry?

Most of the emails that alert us to EFT/ACHs are sent to both finance and me. We forward those that only come to one of us. For the payments we don't expect, Finance gives us a copy of the bank statement with those EFTs marked; I confirm that the gibberish on the bank statement matches someone in RE and we reconcile.

Samuel Meinders · April 2018

If we're not alerted by the donor/avenue themselves, our accounting team will take a screenshot of the depoist in our bank and ask if it's fundraising related. I'll usually recognize the source name right away and claim it. I then use that bank screenshot and any other correspondence I have to create a batch. As someone else also mentioned, if we miss it throughout the month we do a RE/Bank reconciliation when we close our books for the month.

Jen Tenison · April 2018

Claudia Sauers:

How does your finance department notify you of ACH donations? For the most part we receive e-mails from the distributer notifying us of an incoming payment but sometimes we get disbursements with no warning, how does that get communicated to your development team for gift entry?

Our Finace team prints out Bank Draft forms with the amount and date. Then hopefully Constituents give us a heads up as to when they are sending the donation.Sometimes we only the amount and date. An unfortunatly have to post to Anonymous until a constituent has come forward.

Notification of ACH Payments

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