Does anyone use the 'posting to general ledger' feature with Raiser's Edge? I'm trying to make the year-end gift processing easier for our accounting department. We currently do not have the Financial Edge package from Blackbaud.

When we haven't closed out the books and are still gift processing into the new year, accounting has to book our gifts as pledges in the previous year and then post them as payments in the new year--because technically the money hits the bank in the new year. (Our accounting wants to know if we could do the same; it would entail twice the work and would not be an efficient use of our time, plus it would mess up campaign reporting.)

The way we've been doing it in the past is we pick an unused date in the previous year and post the gifts to that date--even though we're into the new year (and haven't closed the books). I'm thinking perhaps by still posting gifts with a "Gift Date" in the previous year, but using the "Post Date" with the current year that I could accommodate their needs--somewhat. Accounting could pick up the general ledger amounts from the current year but would still have to post our cash gifts in the new year as pledge receivables in the previous year (so our numbers matach).

I'm wondering how other organizations handle year-end gift processing with their accounting departments.

we go through this on a monthly basis. We do not use Blackbaud's accounting system either.
Normally all of our gifts are entered through batch as not posted. But, during those first days of the new month when we are trying to reconcile and 'prove' our figures to accounting's figures, our gifts are marked as "do not post", so they don't come over when we post our figures (through database administration). Once our figures prove, I run a query based on those gifts and do a global change to post status = 'not posted'.

I don't know if this would work for you, but it does for us. good luck!

We don't use the 'posting to general ledger feature either. Our fiscal year runs Jul-Jun and the end of the year is just another month to us. The only difference is when we receive the gift. It has to be postmarked by 12.31 or delivered to our office by 12.31. We close at 4:30 and all the directors are on-call to pick up any last minute gifts. All gifts that arrive after the new year, [i]are credited to the previous year if it is postmarked by 12.31.[/i] We also keep all gift envelopes for the months of December and January, just is case. Let me know if this helps.

We do Post to the General Ledger, and also interface with Financial Edge. To resolve the issues you describe that occur at year end, we use the ability to made the Gift Date different from the GL Post date. We would make the Gift Date equal to the check date or postmark date, and the GL Post Date would be the date of the deposit. For Example: Gift Date: 12/30/2003 GL Post Date: 1/3/2004 This keeps the Accounting records accurate, while also crediting donors in the appropriate year for their charitable contribution. Typically, we default the Gift Date and GL Post Date the same, but this feature works well for instances like you described. It works well for us. Joni Becker JCCC Foundation