Year End Statements

Krys West · November 2015

This is the third year to use RE and this year we want to have a more flexible Year End Statement than just the canned Annual Statement Report. We don't even have room to include the "no goods or services" on that report. Also, we are a school and we include everything on our year end statement. So while some gifts could be to the Annual Fund, statements will also include Booster Club memberships, which are not fully tax deductible.

Just wondering how anyone else exports/queries the information to create a year end statement.

Thanks!

Wendy Whitmire 2 · November 2015

Hi Krys. We have been creating our Year End Statements outside of the RE Report for several years. We like to use the window envelopes and a standard letterhead so as you know that meant we had to find another solution. Wedisplay the following details for each gift given for the year; gift amount, the pay method and gift date. I create a constituent query of the donors who meet our criteria (we limit mailing statements only to donors who have given a single gift of $250 or greater), then i use export to create a .csv of all the fields we need for a merge. This is then merged into a template that our Mar/Comm team created. We audit the results and then send the file to a mail house for printing, stuffing and mailing. Then i repeat the process for all donors regardless of the amount and we perform only the merge. This file is retained for those donors who contact us an ask for a statement even if they didn't meet our requirement for mailing.

In regards to the Booster Club Memberships - you may be able to tag those in some way on the merge file and include an extra statement in your footer.

Robert Flynn · November 2015

You can add the "no goods and services" statement as a footer on the "Format" tab under "Page Footer."

When you add gifts that are not fully tax deductible (i.e. quid pro quo) you can enter the "receipt amount" value that equals the tax deductible portion. Then the report will show a gift amount in one column and the receipt amount in another.

We save the completed word files as an adobe .pdf file. The we add a our logo as a water mark and also add a signature to the report.

We send them to our donors with a letter thanking them for their generosity and explaining the report.

erin russell · November 2015

I have the same problem - our department wants the financial information embedded in a nice looking letter. I have tried and tried to get the canned reports to be sufficient but it just doesnt fly. What i've ended up doing is creating an export into a word document. Unfortunately, it wont let me export more than 4 gifts (it says there is a limit). So - i use a combination of the word export and manual entry.

I am dying for a better solution, but have yet to find one!

JoAnn Strommen · November 2015

Erin, I'm curious...

Are you using Export function to Simple Word Merge doc? I don't do end of year statements but do other exports to Word that pull more than 4 gift amounts. In # of gifts to export is criteria set to 4? I use gift summary for fund / yr. Maybe that's why I can export more than 4.

Maya Francis · November 2015

Erin,

Found this article on Knowledgebase, thought this might be helpful.

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/75636

Also there is a limit of 61 fields total that you can export when using Word Merge Export. How many fields are you trying to export?

We use Word Merge Export for the Year End Tax letters. We export the gift summary for that calendar year rather than each gift for that period.

Shannon Rajoelina · November 2015

Hi Krys!

I've seen a lot of organizations that use SAP Crystal Reports to create custom annual statements. Blackbaud University has two training classes on the topics that you could take if interested. The basic process would be to export the data you need into an mdb file, and then use Crystal Reports to format the letter/statement exactly as you need. Here is a quick link to more info on how to do this process.

Gracie Schild · November 2015

Hi - we had the same problem, though we deal with only total annual gifts of $1000 or more, so it's a managable group. We do a combo of the report with the Receipt Amount (labeled as "Tax-deductible Portion") and a letter that has the total and the tax-deductible portion again. We export the information for the latter from a Query and can tweak a little as needed. We've only had a couple reports that needed to have the reporting criteria altered and run individually - the rest could all be run from the same Query we use for the letter.

I will say that we had to do some weird wording to make our "no goods or services" blurb fit at the bottom. I haven't tried to change it since 7.94 came out - did they make the field longer? It was one of the many instances where the field was too short for what the average organization needs to put in. Having a letter to go with it, though, does make that easier - we can put whatever we like in that and then refer to the list for the gifts involved.

Krys West · December 2015

Thanks to everyone for these answers. I had been mentally reviewing how I would do an export or a Crystal Report. Since I have never done a crystal - just taken the training, I was worried about that part.

Then a lightbulb went off in my head and I have decided to do an export to Google Sheets and then use the autocrat add on and email statements this year. That way they will look exactly how I want them to look and will be emailed to everyone and I will save on paper, printing, and postage. There may be a few I still have to mail, but that's what I'm going to try this year. I used this combination for receipts for our benefit dinner and it worked out really well.

Denise Covington · December 2015

That is a wonderful idea! We are a school and like to report to donors what they gave personally, via family founation, via named fund, so we do a Crystal Report that prints out all gifts that they are hard or soft credited on. They get credit for the hard credits, and a notation of from ABC Foundation is noted by the donation. It is really quite slick, but the report was built before my time, so I cannot take the credit. Only share what we have.

Good luck with your statements!

Year End Statements

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