RE and FE Integration Standard Procedure Question

Tamara Pickering · April 2015

Hi,

My organization is integrated with Raiser's Edge and Financial Edge. This has caused a conflict between Finance and Development when it comes to gift entry. In RE we count donations as households. In other words husbands and wives share a record. When we enter gifts from small family foundations or foundations like the United Way we also enter them into the individuals record. We have found (on the Devo side) that the information is much cleaner this way. In Devo's weekly/monthly reports to Finance we include a column called "Name on check" so that Finance can enter the name they need for their tracking purposes in FE. This system works great for Devo but not for Finance. Finance wants us to create a seperate record in RE for each donor, so that the name on the check always matches Bio 1. Are you integrated with RE and FE? If so, what is your standard procedure for entering donations as it pertains to this topic??

Thank you!

Joshua Bekerman bCLO bCRE · April 2015

Whoa! I'm confused. As you mention, RE and FE are integrated so why are they entering the name they need for tracking purposes? Where in FE would they be entering the name anyway? I'm almost afraid to ask where you are entering "Name on check." I've never heard of such a process and it sounds like a lot of duplicate entry and extra work for both development and finance.

But to answer your question, we enter gifts based on the name on the check. If we receive a check from a spouse of someone we already have a record for we create a new record for the spouse and make sure they are linked.

Tamara Pickering · April 2015

Josh thank you for your answer!!

The name on check is a gift attribute in RE. In FE they enter it as the reference...which is the field that contains the name. We do it this way because we often use constituent attributes as criteria for various invations rather than giving level (my organization does quite a bit of cherry picking when it comes to invitations/mailings). Having seperate spouse records became very messy as there are various staff members who enter information into RE so some tags would be on one spouses' record and some on the other or duplicated. So for example, if a couple moved, often times only one spouse record would be updated. If the spouse that had the various constituent attributes to trigger a mailing wasn't updated, they wouldn't receive the mailing/invitation. Or if a spouse was marked deceased and the constituent attributes were not carried over to the living spouse record, the living spouse would not receive the mailing. Also, we are integrated with Patron's Edge. When a donor was greeted at our front desk, a rep would search their record, in PE, for their membership. If the membership was not on their record, we would have to ask for a spouse name and pull up the spouse record since a membership can only live on one record. We also recieve a lot of foundation checks some couples give through more than one foundation. So having seperate spouse records plus 2 foundation records to represent 1 household got a little out of hand with soft credits.

Tamara Pickering · April 2015

Josh Bekerman:

Whoa! I'm confused. As you mention, RE and FE are integrated so why are they entering the name they need for tracking purposes? Where in FE would they be entering the name anyway? I'm almost afraid to ask where you are entering "Name on check." I've never heard of such a process and it sounds like a lot of duplicate entry and extra work for both development and finance.

But to answer your question, we enter gifts based on the name on the check. If we receive a check from a spouse of someone we already have a record for we create a new record for the spouse and make sure they are linked.

Do you pull mailings/invitations mostly by giving level or do you use Constituent attributes as well?

JoAnn Strommen · April 2015

Josh Bekerman:

Whoa! I'm confused. As you mention, RE and FE are integrated so why are they entering the name they need for tracking purposes? Where in FE would they be entering the name anyway? I'm almost afraid to ask where you are entering "Name on check." I've never heard of such a process and it sounds like a lot of duplicate entry and extra work for both development and finance.

But to answer your question, we enter gifts based on the name on the check. If we receive a check from a spouse of someone we already have a record for we create a new record for the spouse and make sure they are linked.

We are FE integrated. Our process is same as Josh's. Sounds like lots of duplication. In your second post, some of those mistakes like address not being updated can be remedied by using functions built into RE. May need some staff training on not ignoring pop ups or making correct choices on pop ups.

Barbara Van Handel · April 2015

We do not have FE but we have one record for a husband and wife as a standard practice. We record checks signed by either in this record. We have not run into issues with this except at the time of a divorce when we did not have any information until we received a call after a mailing. That was the only time we had a problem.

RE and FE Integration Standard Procedure Question

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