Soft crediting with an underpaid pledge

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Robyn Swiderski
Robyn Swiderski ✭
Tenth Anniversary Name Dropper Photogenic First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
We receive a check from the Give to the Max Day each year.  We have a dollar amount that we expect to receive.  I download all the transactions from the webpage and enter the total donations as one pledge amount on the ID number of the company (GiveMN) in Raisers Edge.   All the donors need to receive soft credit for the full amount of their gift when we receive the actual check.



When we received the check this year, there were fees that reduced the amount actually paid to us.



In the past, any anonymous donor amounts were used to pay the fee amount.  However, this year, the anonymous amount did not cover all the fees, so all the donor soft credits were reduced.  We have a "pre-fund" set up to cover any fees that may not be covered by the anonymous donors' amount.  There are multiple gift IDs then when I try to pull that money from the "pre-fund" and apply it to the soft credits.



How do I apply the amount of the final check, minus fees, to the pledge and still make sure all the donors receive the full donation amount?  The check was already processed and committed before I could enter soft credits right in the batch.



Any help appreciated! 



 
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  • Amy Dana
    Amy Dana ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Is there a reason for reducing the donation amount because of the fees? This seems like a major can of worms to me because nowdays almost everything has a fee. Do you do the same thing for credit cards? It seems like it would just be eaiser to give the donors full credit for their gifts since that's what they actually paid you.
  • Jen Claudy
    Jen Claudy ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I would enter the total amount as the gift, and the fees are accounted for in your Finance Department.  We do this for a couple of things, most often credit card gifts.  (There are at least a couple threads in the Community about this, probably in the OLX section.)



    I know not everyone does, but I track the fees and the actual amount received as Gift Attributes because "when in doubt, track it" (unless it's a tremendous amount of additional work with little to no ROI).  My preference is to keep that data in RE, so in the future, it's right there and there is no need to go back in the Finance software to figure anything out.  (My Attributes are "Fee Amt" and "Amt Rec'd".)



    Since you mentioned that you already enter this as a Pledge, I would do the Pledge as the full amount with a Payment for the check amount and a Write Off or Adjustment (I prefer Adjustments as Write Offs have caused me huge headaches in the past) for the fee amount.



    And, particularly because this is only once a year, document the heck out of your process & reasoning!

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