Can anyone give me some advice on tracking fund balances in RE without FE?  It was suggested to do this by adding an attribute to the fund to track the distribution amounts.  You would then have to export to Excel to calculate the current balance.  Do you think this is the best way?

Thanks so much!

Raiser's Edge is not accounting software.  This information is kept by m your accounting department in whatever software they use (FE, Quickbooks, Great Plains, etc).  RE should not be tracking distributions out of a fund at all - only donation income. 

Your finance office is presumably moving the money so they have all of this information - how will you be getting it?  Why would you even want to duplicate the function of the finance office in your development office?  That would be extra work.

Fundraising software and Development software are completely designed differently and are for completely different purposes.  Trying to use your broom to mop the floor is going to take a lot of work and not give you the results you desire. 

I would also check with your auditors on whether tracking expenses and balances of funds by the same department that tracks donations is allowable. Many auditors require separation of duties by personnel, department, etc. I'm not sure if there are any FASB or CASE rulings on this sort of thing, but in my many years of experience (and I used to work for a software company that did fund raising and accounting software) I have never seen a situation where the fund balances were tracked by the fund raising department. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, just that I haven't seen it.

My supervisor mentioned that she liked the idea of knowing the balance of a fund without having to request it from our accounting firm.  I'm not sure how the financial process works entirely but I think we write the distribution checks so we do have the information needed to maintain a balance. I agree it would be duplicating work.  She just asked if it would be possible.  I think I'll say it's not recommended.  Thanks!

I have never heard of a fundraising office that writes distribution checks.  If this is in fact the case, you must use some kind of accounting software to do that - isn't the fund balance in there? 

I suggest that you learn what the financial process is so that you can help make decisions on things like this.  I'm also not sure that an auditor would like the idea of a fundraising office also acting in the role of accounting office so I'm actually going to assume that you do not write checks from your office. 

In that case, I would suggest that she try to find a way go gain access (even if read only) to whatever accounting software your finance office is using.  Either that or she request weekly reports from them on all fund balances which should be in her right to do.  That would be much more efficient than having your department duplicate their work. 

Hi Ellen- As I work in a two person office (the Director and me) I process the donations and I also write the distribution checks. I keep an excel spreadsheet of all donations that come in and the distributions we make, so that my Director can ask me anytime how much $$ we have to distribute out of any account and I can tell her. Our Auditors don't have a problem with this at all.