We have recently turned on the business rule to automatically soft credit spouses with gifts.  It's causing some difficulty with reports though because of how we handle gifts that come from donor advised or family funds as we want to recognize the recipient of the soft credit.  We also run reports based on giving to invidivual class funds and things get messy there as well.  A class member could be married to a member from the same class, they could also be married to a member of a different class and/or also be the recipient of a credit from a donor advised fund.  Anyone else having issues.  We're ready to turn the auto soft credit back off.

We don't soft credit spouses. Have you looked into the Head of Household functionality? We use soft credits for real soft credit situations like you listed for DAF's, Memorial's where the check is from one person but lots of folks contributed to the individual that wrote the check, etc.

Something I do that is part of our procedure is to make the highest solicitation level person the head of household primary on the account and the Spouse's account has a constotuent code of second account. This way, data entry staff have a very visible means of seeing that gifts should not go on the spouse account- they should go on the primary household account. Having the costituent record for the spouse allows us to mail them as part of committees, biards, etc. but still keeps the primary record for gifts. (And don't forget about recognition - if you soft credit spouses you may be doubling someone's recognition inadvertantly)

 Hope this helps.

Hi Lois,

We automatically soft credit spouses as well. I don't handle the "money processing" or reporting so I don't know what we do about donor advised funds and the like. For alum married to alum (same class or not) we use soft credits all the way around giving each person the full amount of the donation and use that number in any recognition reporting we do. Anything that is reporting actual numbers for auditors, the bank, etc, we don't include soft credits. So in our annual recognition listing Jane & John Smith will each be listed at the $100 level even though we only received one $100 donation from them. When we state how much money we raised, we say $1000 and that does not include soft credits. It's the way it's been done for years and it works for us and our donors. We believe there can never be enough recognition and if someone wants to be called "Gloria Everylasting Light of the Universe" in the annual recognition report, they can. We send their thank you to Gloria Smith.

I know this can be a tad much with reporting. Some of the reports that are given to the vps are run twice, once with soft credits and once without. But it is what it is.

So, you are not alone in your issues and you are not going crazy, it's confusing and difficult. You'll just have to figure out how you want to handle it.

 laura

I handle soft credits the same way Laurel does.  After struggling with the reporting issues, I stopped s/c spouses several years ago and reporting is much less complicated now.  I also use HOH processing to ensure that gifts are entered on the primary account.  To add to Laurel's post, you can create a business rule to warn data entry people if they attempt to add a gift to a secondary account.  As Laura said, this is a complicated and confusing issue - you need to find what works best for you and be consistent.

Leslie

After following this forum, our organization decided to turn off the automatic soft crediting feature. However, I am unable to find a business rule that accomplishes that, and BB tells me that has only been filed as a suggestion. For those of you not automatically soft crediting spouses, will you please tell me how you are configuring this?

Thanks,

Lynda Lee
Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy

There is a checkbox on General 2 tab of the relationship record that says "automatically soft credit this individual for gifts" or some such nonesense. So for onesie-twosie adding and changing spouses it should be simple enough to do. Just one more step in the process.

 If you have a large group that you want to change, you can use Globally Change records. Checking or unchecking that box is one of the options. Just be sure you've got the correct records if you do this. I have never done this particular global change so I don't know the ins and outs of it. When in doubt, choose 5 to 10 records the first time and see what happens. If it doesn't work they way you think it will, there aren't that many records to fix manually.

 laura

See knowledgebase solution BB46001.  This is a suggestion that is currently under review to allow users to set their own personalised default setting.  Add your name if its for you!

Alan

Laura Caswell:

 If you have a large group that you want to change, you can use Globally Change records. Checking or unchecking that box is one of the options. Just be sure you've got the correct records if you do this. I have never done this particular global change so I don't know the ins and outs of it.

BB10310: How to globally mark or unmark the Automatically soft credit this individual (or organization) for gifts checkbox