[Gay]

I am considering conversion to FE from BEST (formerly MIP and formerly some name I no longer remember). Have used a separate software for G/L for many years. I am concerned that using RE and FE gives too much control of what revenue is posted where, to my front office. Any comments?

Any recent conversions from BEST to FE or vice-a-versa, conversions from FE to BEST? Why?

Thanks,

Gay

[nisaac]

There is process written into FE that gives the Finance office control over what is posted over. Here's a short explanation of how it works:

- gifts are entered into RE (we work closely with the Finance dept to assure we have appeals and funds set up appropriately.)
- funds in RE link directly with projects in FE
- gifts are posted to FE from RE - reports are produced
- in FE, the gifts come into a journal batch. Finance gets the reports from RE and reviews the journal batch along with the tag copies or pdf file showing the gift information.
- once the Finance office has checked out the gifts, they are then processed into FE.

It really is a great system of checks and balances. We have a series of reports that go with each batch processed.

Hope this helps on process.

[Gay]

Well, that sounds promising, Nora. Thank you.

We currently use batches in RE and have an additional spreadsheet breaking the batches into cash, cr cards, gift in kind and stock (different types of transactions are posted in separate batches). All G/L and the cash deposit (cash receipts) are reconciled to the RE in batches, via RE reports, in date specific time frames. Credit cards are processed by another entity so all credit transactions are booked as a receivable. I mention this for two reasons. One, we need to handle the credit cards separately from cash receipts, and two, we post the cash gifts to our accounting module by matching the bank deposit amounts.

Does it seem to you like this system will work with FE as you describe it?

[nisaac]

Gay,

I'm not an accountant so I hesitate to say that FE does what you need; however, I can tell you that you can choose not to post certain gifts to FE. The cool thing is you can even post different parts of a batch separately. For instance, toward the end of the month we post credit cards in detail instead of in summary. We put all of one day's gifts received through the mail in one batch. I created queries to pull credit cards gifits. When we post, we do so by batch and use the query to only pull credit card gifts. I then post that part of the batch in detail. I then post the rest of the batch in summary.

I've found FE to be very flexible. I believe it is really important to have a good relationship between the Finance department and the Fund Raising Department. We work constantly to assure that we post data and offer reports that help the Finance department balance easily to bank deposits and to do the bank reconciliation.