Hello - I've asked this question before but can't find any answers.

We need to do reporting by chapter and branch for events, gifts etc.
So when a staff member enters a gift or creates a new event, we need a space on the record where they can enter the chapter name.

So for example, a $100 gift was made to the Sarnia Chapter, Ontario Branch.

How do people here enter their branch and chapter names on records? It seems to me like this must be a common issue but I can't seem to find any answers to what should probably be a fairly straightforward question.

I don''t know if this is really the same as we don't have chapters and branches but we do have departments.   We track donations to specific departments or programs through Funds.  If a donor gives a gift to the Industrial Design department it goes in Fund 1426, Ceramic  Fund 1439 etc.  We have funds for designated Annual Fund gifts  (all funds in the 1000s) and different funds for restricted gifts (Funds in the 2000s) for each department in the school. Works well, easy to report and/or track.

Thanks for your reply. We were thinking of using funds for chapter names also. However, one sticking point is with events - there is no place in the event module to attach an event to a chapter, just a campaign. So that could be difficult for reporting purposes.

Taking a quick look at the Event Module, you could put the Chapter/Branch in the description for the event.   When $$$ come in the fund  could be entered on the gift with a corresponding appeal of the event name.  We don't do events for specific departments/funds so trying to track it there is not something I have actually done. 

Not everyone uses gifts with the event module.  Somehoe some places just enter the units as payments which then would limit their ability to put a fund in.

Are you entering the payments as gifts and linking them to the event module?  If so, then you use the fund on the gift but would only be able to add it as comments on the unit gift entry.  The fund on the gift is the much more reliable reporting tool as comments are a text field and a misspelling could mess up your reporting.

You might want to consider attributes, whether they are Event attributes, Participant attributes or gift attributes, depending on your need.