Fund Type and Fund Category

We use in the following way:


Fund Type:  Only three choices - Unrestricted, Temporarily Restricted, Permanently Restricted (Endowment)

Fund Category:  This is for the college/department/program that the fund benefits. Our monthly reports to each of these is pulled from this field.  Also, when a request comes in for donors - i.e. Athletics we can pull based on category instead of invidivual funds.

Think about how these fields can be useful to you and try to let that guide your process. What kinds of things would be useful for you? How are these fields used for canned report, exports or queries?


I've used things like non-expendable unrestricted, non-expendable restricted, expendable restricted... Or event, grant, annual, capital... As to whether those are types or categories depends on how you need to look at the info.

Have never used Fund Type.  In regards to what some others have said about Restricted, Unrestricted, Temp Restricted.  That info is reflected in another field that is easily accessible in all canned reports.


When RE is not linked with FE, or the org does not even use FE, you need some way to reconcile that is pretty clear to both sides which bucket/Fund the contribution falls into.  My solution to this is to put the account number in the Fund Description.  The Fund ID is what the Development people usually see because it is just the name of the fund.


That way you can sort on account number for Finance Dept. and on the name of the Fund for the Development Dept.  I also go a step further and break the Fund IDs into 3-4 categories based on if they fall into annual giving, endowment, event revenue, capital by just putting a letter, maximum two on the Fund ID.  Example: a.TuitionAssistance, a.Athletics, en.EndowSmallyMemEnd, en.EndowGen, c.CapitalGym, c.CapitalLibr


Makes it easier to sort the smaller buckets into larger buckets for many reports.

Likewise, we didn't purchase Financial Edge.  We use both Fund Category and Fund Type to link donations to the chart of accounts in our accounting system, making it easier to reconcile.  For example, our fund categories represent the Account codes (restricted cash, unrestricted cash, non-cash donations, tributes, etc.) while fund types represent the combinations of our Funds (general, capital, etc.) and our Cost Centers as defined in our accounting package.

Hi - we have FE for our school, but use QuickBooks for our Foundation, both pulling from RE.  I created a Fund Attribute with the actual QuickBooks account number, so that when the bookkeeper is pulling reports, she can see that the gifts to fund X should all be credited to QB account 1234.  She does pivot tables in Excel for the multiple-batch deposits and can save and print out the papertrail for everything she does. We've never really used the Fund Type and Category in a consistent way but I didn't want to mess with it for this tiny thing.


By the way, I started a "notebook" in One Note (since it came with Office) while I was doing all kinds of remote training with our super-hero consultant. I was able to record my questions whenever they occurred to me and the answers we came up with during sessions.  I am now converting that into a procedures policy and record things like this Fund Attribute there.  Eventually, I want to have a "cheat sheet" for those doing data entry (or for me when I check their work) to make sure that all new funds and gifts have the appropriate things added.  With a page for every type of record or process, it's a little cumbersone, but easily moved around and copied into and out of - in my copious free time!