Lets say a vendor purchases table space or something similar at an event. Should this be entered in RE? I'm curious as to where the line should be drawn between 'fee' and charitable donation.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

This is something the corporate accountant and I have discussed several times.  We hold planned giving seminars for our local lawyers, accountants, etc., and charge an attendance fee.  We also ask a couple of vendors to sponsor the event each time one is held.  The attendance fees are not considered donations and are deposited directly into the expense account from which the event is paid.  The sponsorship, however, is a charitable donation since it is not required and the vendor gets nothing in return for the gift.  HTH,

Leslie

Exactly. What the vendors pay for a table, or what one would pay to attend your event, is not tax-deductible, and accordingly, not a donation. But the powers-that-be quite rightly want to be able to track this kind of income and have suggested we use RE to do so.

I suppose we could segregate the 'gifts' out with a gift code, but then one has to exclude that gift code in perpetuity whenever a query is run.