[Shanna G.]

Not sure if this is in the right place or not, but I'm not sure where else to put it!

Would it be completely off kilter if I wanted to actually be walked through my Accounting department's gift processing process? Requesting stuff like this in my org has been long looked down upon, but I think it would help me to understand some things and help to make sure our databases match.

Is this a common request?

[Melissa Siobhan]

Actually - it would not be off kilter to request that your accounting office not process gifts at all. Most often this is done in the development office. This has been discussed at on www.fundsvcs.org a lot and most consultants and professionals believe it is best done in the development/advancement office.

If you are not processing the gifts then absolutely your office should know and understand their process.

[Shanna G.]

That's the thing - they do their own tracking or something over there parallel to ours.

The checks come to Development (me) first to get logged in RE and copied. Then the checks along with a Cash Receipts journal (because our accounting dept insists on tracking appeals) gets sent to them. I believe they then do their own processing into their own system (since we're not integrated). I have no idea what they do or how they do it, but some of the questions I've been getting pertaining to their current audit, have raised some red flags for me and now I really want to know what happens once they get the paperwork and checks I send them!

[Simon Stacey]

Would make sense to me! Especially if you're running the DB which is used to record all donor/gift data. Looking down on that kind of thing sounds daft to me (apologies, but it does!) - during my five year stint in the commercial world, every member of our team spent some time shadowing another department, and then reported back to the rest of the team - it was partly our manager's cunning plan to give people practice doing presentations (and in my case experimenting with the possibilities of PowerPoint to handle subliminal messages), and partly so that we'd have a better idea where our team sat in the organisation.

(Was response to original post.)

[andrea.bbbs]

Subliminal Messages??? Do elaborate!!!! How cool is that???!!! I can just see it - we run PowerPoint loops at our events - you could put in messages that say "bid again"..... "bid higher" .... "bid way more than that stuff is worth".......

I am SO there!!! Tell me how - please?

[Anne Marie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shanna G.

That's the thing - they do their own tracking or something over there parallel to ours.

The checks come to Development (me) first to get logged in RE and copied. Then the checks along with a Cash Receipts journal (because our accounting dept insists on tracking appeals) gets sent to them. I believe they then do their own processing into their own system (since we're not integrated). I have no idea what they do or how they do it, but some of the questions I've been getting pertaining to their current audit, have raised some red flags for me and now I really want to know what happens once they get the paperwork and checks I send them!

Shanna, I would think for the "health" of your organization that you request such a tour of the facilities so to speak. Do you have a supervisor that you could request this of?

Perhaps by going the "I wish to more fully comprehend how the organization operates at all levels" route, you could arrange a tour. If you put the emphasis on your growth and learning, and not on suspicions of what is going on over there in the accounting department, you may open doors.

[Melissa Siobhan]

It would also not be unreasonable to ask for a montly reconciliation report. You report to them what you have for totals for the month (through RE financial reports) and give it to them. They run what they have and if there are differnces either you or they correct them or they report out why they accounted for something differently than you did (which will happen).

[Simon Stacey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrea.bbbs

Subliminal Messages??? Do elaborate!!!! How cool is that???!!! I can just see it - we run PowerPoint loops at our events - you could put in messages that say "bid again"..... "bid higher" .... "bid way more than that stuff is worth".......

I am SO there!!! Tell me how - please?

Unfortunately, I didn't get promoted to "well paid person doing nothing", so I can't vouch for their effectiveness, but seeing as the effectiveness of subliminal messages is also debatable, it's a grey area. [grin] Although apparently my little animated icon causes unease in some people ...

Basically, I just chucked in a couple of slides using the "timed slide" progression - but on very short delays, so that they flashed up briefly. Admittedly, they weren't fast enough to actually count as subliminal messages, but they weren't up for very long - just enough for people to get an impression of them, before moving onto the next slide. I always preferred graphic design to writing presentations anyway ...

[andrea.bbbs]

I like that! You can change the timing of just one slide in a presentation?

Now that is something to ponder. (I have always wanted to use that word in a sentence...)

[Simon Stacey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrea.bbbs

I like that! You can change the timing of just one slide in a presentation?

Now that is something to ponder. (I have always wanted to use that word in a sentence...)

Well, you definitely could with the version of PowerPoint that we were using - given the joys of MicroSoft, it's entirely possible that they could have removed that function ... [grin] But, if it's still there, then yes, you can set the individual slide timings - I set most of my progressions to "manual" (or whatever they call it), so that they were triggered by the mouse/keyboard, and then had a couple of quick transitions on "timed", for effect. But I like playing with that kind of thing ...