How does your organization handle gift assessment fees?

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Tami Pearson
Tami Pearson ✭
Tenth Anniversary
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hi there! We are working on implementing a new gift assessment fee on most gifts to our university. In working with our accounting folks, we are trying to find a way to help them calculate the fees and flow that information into their (non-Blackbaud) GL (the fees vary based on the size of the gift). Accounting would love if we split the assessment fee out in RE, but we are not going to do that. We know it is not a best practice, nor is it a development function. Have you, as a Raiser's Edge user, found any ways to make this process easier for your accounting folks? And if you currently have an assessment fee, how does that work when you reconcile your records with accounting? Thank you for any feedback you can provide!
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  • Heather MacKenzie
    Heather MacKenzie ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I've got a "co-worker," in my hospital system (read this as my equivalent at another hospital) who has told me about doing an export of gift data to excel every whatever time period (I think she has told me every other week this happens) and then uses Excel to calculate the fee amount with a predetermined formula that's set for a certain percentage.  The columns she exports are very basic, just gift date and gift amount, then Excel does the hard part for her, but she's got a macro set up to insert the formula and do some formatting, etc.  I can get more details if you'd like, just respond here.  Hope this helps!
  • Jen Claudy
    Jen Claudy ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    We track the Fee and AmtRec'd as Gift Attributes.  That way, the data is in RE if it's ever needed in the future.  On the Finance side, they record the full amount as a gift with a receivable entry, then when the funds come, the amount received goes against the receivable and the remainder is coded to a fees entry (or something like that).  I have an Excel document setup that calculates the fees for me, to make entering in RE really easy.  I wish OLX (Blackbaud's Online Express, for online & credit card donations) or RE itself would include a built in calculator for this function.  It would be awesome to enter a pay method of Credit Card and the Gift Amount, and have RE automatically calculate the Fee and AmtRec'd values (based on what is entered as the fee rate in Config).  Might have to go add that in the Idea Bank.



    Might not be a development function, but we have been asked (by a donor pretty close to us, but still) what the fee was for his gift, and our system made it very easy to tell him.  Plus, my boss asks on occasion for the total amounts of all three values for a certain timeframe, and since it's all in RE, it's easy to do.

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