Looking for Ideas: Deferred Funds in RE and FE

Michelle Tribe · April 2018

Hello all:

I thought I would put this out here to get opinions / advice the collective brain.

My organization does children's camps and birthday parties, and we collect the fees for the event BEFORE the event - sometimes several months before the event. Our accounting office says that we have to mark these fees as deferred until the month of the event.

We are trying to find the simplest solution to mark these in Raiser's Edge for posting into Financial Edge. There is an additional challenge that the Development Team that processes the payments in Raiser's Edge and posts them to Financial Edge are in a different building than the Accounting team, who does the reconciling in Financial Edge and manages the deferred funds.

Currently, we have one fund for CAMPS, and when we post the gifts from RE to FE, the accountant then has to log into RE, run a query to see which month each camp payment is for, and manually journal-entry it into the correct month to defer the payment. This is taking up too much time and not working well.

My team brainstormed today, and we are thinking that:

In Raiser's Edge, we can set up a separate fund for each month (for example: CAMPS-Jan, CAMPS-Feb, CAMPS-Mar, etc.). In Financial Edge, we will set up the account numbers to be the same, but with a different project number for each month (for example: 00001 will be January, etc.). This means that we will have 12 funds for Camps, 12 funds for Birthdays, etc., but it will allow the accountant to know "when" to put the money. So if a parent purchases a camp registration in April for a camp happening in July, the fund would be CAMPS-Jul.

Thoughts? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thank you so much!

John Heizer · April 2018

Michelle Tribe:

Hello all:

I thought I would put this out here to get opinions / advice the collective brain.

My organization does children's camps and birthday parties, and we collect the fees for the event BEFORE the event - sometimes several months before the event. Our accounting office says that we have to mark these fees as deferred until the month of the event.

We are trying to find the simplest solution to mark these in Raiser's Edge for posting into Financial Edge. There is an additional challenge that the Development Team that processes the payments in Raiser's Edge and posts them to Financial Edge are in a different building than the Accounting team, who does the reconciling in Financial Edge and manages the deferred funds.

Currently, we have one fund for CAMPS, and when we post the gifts from RE to FE, the accountant then has to log into RE, run a query to see which month each camp payment is for, and manually journal-entry it into the correct month to defer the payment. This is taking up too much time and not working well.

My team brainstormed today, and we are thinking that:

In Raiser's Edge, we can set up a separate fund for each month (for example: CAMPS-Jan, CAMPS-Feb, CAMPS-Mar, etc.). In Financial Edge, we will set up the account numbers to be the same, but with a different project number for each month (for example: 00001 will be January, etc.). This means that we will have 12 funds for Camps, 12 funds for Birthdays, etc., but it will allow the accountant to know "when" to put the money. So if a parent purchases a camp registration in April for a camp happening in July, the fund would be CAMPS-Jul.

Thoughts? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thank you so much!

We don't use FE, but something you might look at, rather than creating to many funds that it would drive you crazy, is to look at Gift Subtypes. That can let you customize GL numbers without having to create another Fund.

JoAnn Strommen · April 2018

I have question so will ask: What are these camp payments that you are putting in RE? If they are a gift, wondering why you have to get so specific about what camp they are for?

If they have to go in RE, I second John's suggestion of gift subtypes, avoid 12 funds for each.

Beth Romano · April 2018

Michelle Tribe:

Hello all:

I thought I would put this out here to get opinions / advice the collective brain.

My organization does children's camps and birthday parties, and we collect the fees for the event BEFORE the event - sometimes several months before the event. Our accounting office says that we have to mark these fees as deferred until the month of the event.

We are trying to find the simplest solution to mark these in Raiser's Edge for posting into Financial Edge. There is an additional challenge that the Development Team that processes the payments in Raiser's Edge and posts them to Financial Edge are in a different building than the Accounting team, who does the reconciling in Financial Edge and manages the deferred funds.

Currently, we have one fund for CAMPS, and when we post the gifts from RE to FE, the accountant then has to log into RE, run a query to see which month each camp payment is for, and manually journal-entry it into the correct month to defer the payment. This is taking up too much time and not working well.

My team brainstormed today, and we are thinking that:

In Raiser's Edge, we can set up a separate fund for each month (for example: CAMPS-Jan, CAMPS-Feb, CAMPS-Mar, etc.). In Financial Edge, we will set up the account numbers to be the same, but with a different project number for each month (for example: 00001 will be January, etc.). This means that we will have 12 funds for Camps, 12 funds for Birthdays, etc., but it will allow the accountant to know "when" to put the money. So if a parent purchases a camp registration in April for a camp happening in July, the fund would be CAMPS-Jul.

Thoughts? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thank you so much!

Another option could be to use the gift code on the Miscellaneous tab of the gift.

Michelle Tribe · April 2018

JoAnn Strommen:

I have question so will ask: What are these camp payments that you are putting in RE? If they are a gift, wondering why you have to get so specific about what camp they are for?

If they have to go in RE, I second John's suggestion of gift subtypes, avoid 12 funds for each.

Hi JoAnn:

Registration for our summer kids camps are managed in the RE events module: each week of camp is its own event, and we use the BBNC event registration system. This means that I get to process those camp payments in Raiser's Edge batches. Often a parent will register a child for a summer camp as early as March. It is my understanding from my finance team that due to CRA rules, a camp registration payment made in March for a camp in July, must be deferred until July.

As I've never used FE, and am realizing their is more to accounting codes than I first anticipated, I will read-up on coding gift subtypes and gift codes, and how those are communicated to FE.

Thanks all!

James Andrews · April 2018

Michelle Tribe:

Hello all:

I thought I would put this out here to get opinions / advice the collective brain.

My organization does children's camps and birthday parties, and we collect the fees for the event BEFORE the event - sometimes several months before the event. Our accounting office says that we have to mark these fees as deferred until the month of the event.

We are trying to find the simplest solution to mark these in Raiser's Edge for posting into Financial Edge. There is an additional challenge that the Development Team that processes the payments in Raiser's Edge and posts them to Financial Edge are in a different building than the Accounting team, who does the reconciling in Financial Edge and manages the deferred funds.

Currently, we have one fund for CAMPS, and when we post the gifts from RE to FE, the accountant then has to log into RE, run a query to see which month each camp payment is for, and manually journal-entry it into the correct month to defer the payment. This is taking up too much time and not working well.

My team brainstormed today, and we are thinking that:

In Raiser's Edge, we can set up a separate fund for each month (for example: CAMPS-Jan, CAMPS-Feb, CAMPS-Mar, etc.). In Financial Edge, we will set up the account numbers to be the same, but with a different project number for each month (for example: 00001 will be January, etc.). This means that we will have 12 funds for Camps, 12 funds for Birthdays, etc., but it will allow the accountant to know "when" to put the money. So if a parent purchases a camp registration in April for a camp happening in July, the fund would be CAMPS-Jul.

Thoughts? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thank you so much!

Late to the discussion here, but we have a deferred income fund in RE that posts to a deferred income line in FE. We mostly use it for people paying their annual support gifts early (FY starts in July, we get gifts for the next FY in June relatively often).

When July 1 comes around, we do adjustments in RE to move the gifts from the deferred income fund to the fund where they should be. When the adjustment posts to FE, the income then shows up in the correct month, without our Finance dept having to do a journal entry.

JoAnn Strommen · April 2018

Michelle, sorry for the delayed response. We were closed Friday due to snow storm, YEAH!

Whew, I can't imagine running our camps thru RE. That sounds like a nightmare to manage/track. Hopefully you'll find using the gift sub-types and gift codes will help.

FYI, gift sub-types can be (not required) tied into a GL#. This is set up on the Records > Funds > GL... just like Funds (FE projects). The gift code does not affect FE. I'm not even sure it's pulled over. We have utilized both those options at times for various purposes.

James Andrews · April 2018

JoAnn Strommen:

FYI, gift sub-types can be (not required) tied into a GL#. This is set up on the Records > Funds > GL... just like Funds (FE projects). The gift code does not affect FE. I'm not even sure it's pulled over.

True. The only fields that are included the RE-FE integration are Gift Type, Gift Subtype and Fund.

Looking for Ideas: Deferred Funds in RE and FE

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