[Shanna G.]

What do you give your Accounting department in regards to donations?

A little background on why and what I'm really asking. We're in the midst of streamlining our gift entry and thank you process as it's currently inefficient and repetitive. The check/credit card donations come through the front desk before they go to our Accounting department (which is offsite) - they get logged, scanned, then sent on their way. We want to start using the cash reciepts journal as our donation log, but our Accounting department has asked that we create a cash reciepts journal for credit cards separate from checks/cash. I haven't gotten an answer from them on if this is a need or a want and we are trying to make this a simple as possible for the receptionist to do.

So, do you give your Accounting department separate lists for checks and credit cards or are they all on the same report/log?

[andrea.bbbs]

We are a tiny shop - Database, gift entry, etc. is me, and Accounting, IT, and CFO is Mark.

Reception processes the checks (and cash)- receives, stamps, makes two copies of everything, clips, and runs a tape. It goes to me, I enter the batch, take a copy, and clip. I attach a batch report and a Finance Report - the one with the Campaign totals and give it to Mark.

Mark gets Credit cards and Paypals and processes them first, then gives it to me and I batch, attach batch reports and Finance Report and return to Mark.

It seems to work.....

[SLewis]

We enter our gifts in RE and then give Accounting the Batch sheet with the money. We do a seperate batch for Credit Cards since our accounting dept only charges those once a week.
Is that what you were asking?

[paulmorriss]

One reason that they might want them separate is because of bank reconciliation. They probably are different lines on the bank statement, so to have them lumped together in an RE batch makes it hard to spot which lines on the bank statement have been put through the accounts.

[Melissa Siobhan]

I do separate reports for cash and credit exactly for the reason Paul describes - when reconciling at the end of the month they appear differently on the bank statement and are easier to find. Also some credit card charges come through as net and not gross so giving them it all in one lump report really makes their job more difficult.

Since reporting from RE based on payment type is easy using a query on the report, I just re-use the same two reports every week/month.