Outstanding Pledges

James Redding · December 2015

Hi

I’m looking at our overdue pledges to review the process around them to make sure we are better at chasing any overdue pledges and then writing off any that are clearly unrecoverable. I was wondering how people mark up pledges on RE so they know when the pledge should be paid and how they report on this.

My current thoughts were to use the installment function to mark the pledge is due to be paid. This way we’d have a gift date of the date the pledge was made and an instalment date or dates of when we expect to be paid. However there doesn’t seem to be any simple ways to query or report on instalments that are due but havn’t yet been paid. The Not Paid Report and Past Due report have some of the date I would like but they don’t show the appeal that generated the pledge which is a key piece of data for us.

Regards

James

JoAnn Strommen · December 2015

James,

Have you tried Mail > Reminders? You can export to excel list of payments due as of any certain date (the Run Date field on tab 1). We use it mostly for coming due this month but can use it to show those who were due as of say Dec 1. I pull appeal fund, pledge, amount paid, amount due, etc....

See if that helps.

Nicole S · December 2015

You ABSOLUTELY need to be using the installment schedule. I set up queries for payments due this month or next month or whatever and review it periodically for reminders. It's also intregal if you need to provide cash flow projection reports to your finance office.

JoAnn Strommen · December 2015

Ditto Nicole's post. I was assuming that when a pledge is entered that a payment schedule is also entered. If you don't enter a due date, how can you define them as 'past due'? Definitely the key to tracking overdue. Yes, yes, yes, enter due date and date/schedule of when payments expected.

Jen Claudy · December 2015

Just posted on a similar thread, but after being frustrated with Querying and Exporting Installment information, I started using a Gift Attribute for the Next Installment Reminder. This means I can run a simple query, see all Next Installments, and prepare reminders as needed. We do a lot of customizing, don't have too many pledges that need reminders, and many of those our fundraisers are in regular contact with, so rather than a form letter, we use a very customized touch with a phone call or email or personalized letter. My system does require that when you receive a payment, you open the Pledge Gift Record and update the Date on the Attribute for the new Next Installment. But this also means that if something is late, you are already in the Record and can adjust the Installment Schedule accordingly/appropriately.

James Redding · January 2016

Thanks for the suggestion of using installment and mail reminders. One question i have is how you handle follow up reminders to make sure you don't over chase. Ideally i would like to have us chase overdue payments every 6-8 weeks and so once a fortnight i would want to run the mail reminder but make sure we don't pick anyone up who been chased in the last 6 weeks. I was thinking about setting an attribute each time we run the chaser and then having a query to exclude gifts where we chased in the last 6 weeks using that attribute date. However is there a better solution?

JoAnn Strommen · January 2016

Guess to me it depends on what you are doing to 'chase': sending a letter, calling, or sending the guys in sunglasses to their front door.

Other factors to me are the size of the gift and even donor history. How much time, energy and $ do you put into collecting? If I were to record it as an attribute, I'd be sure to use a date as getting chased in week 1 of the 6-8 week window is due for a chase a lot sooner than someone chased in week 6. Don't know that I'd wait 6-8 weeks for another contact. Two months is quite a long time.

Nicole S · January 2016

I think that when you use the pledge reminders in mail it keeps track of them. Although I don't know if you can query or export that info at all. But I also agree with what JoAnn said: size and gift history have to be taken in to account. I'm not chasing $10. Ever. it would cost me more in time and postage than it was worth.

bbnxt sandboxfour · January 2016

If pledges will be paid in more than one installment, I use the installment schedule and Mail>Reminders. For our large campaigns, we have several that are booked out over 3 to 5 years. I can pull and group these by fund, appeal, or campaign. I run the reminders the last week of the month for installments due the upcoming month. If the donor doesn't give us a schedule, I book it with no installment schedule, but it will show the lump sum of pledge as overdue every month.

At the end of the fiscal year, before our audit,we meet to discuss open pledges and a further plan of contact if needed or to write off. At this time I can show them how much revenue on all pledges that we can expect for each upcoming fiscal year, as far out as needed. I use the Pledge Reports>Cash Flow to produce these reports.

Outstanding Pledges

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