The User's Edge : pledges

10/21 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:32:00 GMT

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10/14 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:30:00 GMT

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Report Roundup: The Activity Report

Douglas Clinton — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:12:00 GMT

The Red October's caterpillar drive made it virtually invisible to sonar. Your constituents and their gifts don't exactly run silent or run deep, but going from gift tab to gift tab isn't the best way to get a fix on the status of their pledges and recurring gifts. The Activity Report accounts for all the pledge and recurring gift payments, installments, and balances due during a time period you define.

To run the report, go to Reports, Pledge and Recurring Gift Reports, Activity Report. On the General tab, select the report's date range. The date range applies to the activity (i.e. payments, installments, balances) on the pledges, not the original pledge date. If you want to include pledges made in a certain date range only, create a gift query of pledges in that date range, and include the query on the General tab.

The Filters tab has the standard filters: Campaigns, Funds, Appeals, and Constituent Codes. On the Gift Types tab, you can choose to include Pledges, Recurring Gifts, and Matching Gift Pledges. Additionally, you can choose to include outstanding Pledges or outstanding Recurring Gifts only.

By default, the report includes 8 columns, which you can edit on the Columns tab. The Constituent Name column is pretty self-explanatory and the Date column refers to the original Pledge or Recurring Gift date. The Amount column shows the whole pledge amount and the Fund column will show the Fund description.

Those are pretty plain vanilla columns, but the Activity Report does have a few unusual ones. The first one is the type column. The column features what at first appear to be a random series of letters and numbers. Don't worry, it all does actually mean something. In order, they refer to the gift type, the installment frequency, and the number of installments. Here's the key to figuring it out:

PL = Master Pledge
PL A2 = Pledge 2 Annual Installments
PL A3 = Pledge 3 Annual Installments
PL SA3 = Pledge 3 Semi-Annual Installments
PL Q4 = Pledge 4 Quarterly Installments
PL BM5 = Pledge 5 Bimonthly Installments
PL M6 = Pledge 6 Monthly Installments
PL SM7 = Pledge 7 Semi-Monthly Installments
PL S1 = Single installment pledge
PL BW8 = Pledge 8 Biweekly Installments
PL W9 = Pledge 9 Weekly Installments
PL I10 = Pledge 10 Irregular Installments

For Recurring Gifts, "REC" appears instead of "PL", and Matching Gift Pledges are listed as "MG PL".

The really tricky columns are the Activity columns. The Activity/Type column is not a calculated column; it includes the following information:

INS = Installment Due (Pledges, even for those without a specified due date)
PAY = Payments to pledges and recurring gifts
Write-off = Pledge write-offs.
MG INS = Matching Gift installments (even for those without a specified due date)
TRN = Recurring gift transactions

The Activity/Date column includes the Installmentor Payment date. The Activity/Amount column includes installment payments due, which are gifts without parentheses, while amounts with parentheses are the installment payments that have been made. The balance is installments due minus payments.

Once you have selected your criteria, click Print or Preview to run the report. This information is also in Knowledgebase solution BB22360.

10/6 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:21:00 GMT

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9/30 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:11:00 GMT

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9/23 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:56:00 GMT

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9/16 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:40:00 GMT

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7/30 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:26:00 GMT

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Sarah's Shortcuts: Preparing for Pledges

Sarah McBride — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:56:00 GMT

So I realize I'm probably starting a little late, but I'm finally beginning to map out a budget of sorts and am taking time to monitor my expenses. It's been rather eye-opening. For one, I don't make as much as I thought I did (good to know). Secondly, I spend far too much at coffee shops, but I am trying to cut back. Oh, Starbucks, how do I love thee?

Working on a budget is also helping me see what expenses I can reduce in order to keep my donations coming for the organizations that are close to my heart (even more so than my beloved green tea frappuccino). I used to rely on my internal to remind me when to make another donation, but I'm realizing that's not a very effective method, and it probably makes it difficult for the nonprofits to budget with such sporadic donations.

If your donors are coming to similar conclusions, it's good to familiarize yourself with the process of adding pledges, setting up installment schedules, and rescheduling pledges as needed.

To set up a pledge with an installment schedule:

Create a new gift, whether in Records or Batch, with Pledge as the gift type.
Open the Pledge Installment Schedule screen:
- If adding the gift in Records, click Schedule on the Gift tab of the gift.
- If adding the gift in Batch, select Gift, Installment Information on the menu bar.
Enter the appropriate frequency, the number of installments, and the starting on date.
Click the Distribute button.
Note: If selecting Irregular as the frequency, the Distribute button is grayed out. Each installment date and amount must be entered manually.
Click OK to save the installment schedule, and save the gift (or commit the gift batch).

To reschedule pledge installments:

On the General tab or the Installments/Payments tab of the pledge, click Schedule.*
Click Reschedule to open the Reschedule Unpaid Installments Wizard.
Enter the adjusted installment frequency, number of installments, and start date.
Click Next to view the new schedule, and click Finish.
Click OK on the Pledge Installment screen, and save the gift.

*Note: If the pledge is marked as Posted, create a gift adjustment to change the pledge installments.

Getting a hold on these procedures will help your data entry go more smoothly as donors make pledges or modify their payment plans for existing pledges. As a little reading assignment, take a look at Knowledgebase solution BB69806: How to print, run, or send pledge reminders, and consider doing a test run to make sure you can create reminders for donors whose internal clocks have gotten a bit off like mine.