Has anyone had experience with Gift Adjustments? My accounting staff do not want to use it because they are afraid they will not be able to track the original transaction.

I'm concerned that if we start changing information in two places, we will jeopardize the integrity of the data. Any suggestions?

Gift Adjustments are for the purpose of accounting - the adjustment reports do track the previous transaction. There are a couple of workarounds that we do on the ones that aren't excatly handled nicely by adjustments. If someone enters a cash gift instead of a pledge payment and you don;t find it on the day of the oops - we end up adjusting the cash gift to zero and entering a new gift for the pledge payment instead of just applying the cash gift to the pledge. (If you just apply the gift - ther is no record of the change and your receivables can all go to hell...) Laurel Quaintance Friends of Bassett Financial Analyst Cooperstown, NY 13326 [Email Removed] 'please forgive my typing mistakes!'

Is it "bad accounting practice" to post a transaction containing an error with the assumption that it will corrected with a gift adjustment? I'm trying to convince the accounting staff to let gift adjustments handle gift errors. My accounting manager refuses to post a batch with an error even knowing that an adjustment will fix it. Any suggestions?

I'm with your accounting one on this. If a transaction has not been posted yet, we would make the correction first. It does not make sense to me to post a batch with known errors. Denise Stengl School Sisters of St. Francis Milwaukee, WI [Email Removed]

Let me clarify, I meant Posting to the GL in FE. Let's assume that the batch has already been posted from the Raiser's Edge to Financial Edge and is sitting as an open Journal Entry batch. My accounting team wants to make the correction in the open Journal Entry batch within the Financial Edge. My only concern with that approach is that we are making changes in two places. Additionally, any changes made to a posted gift in RE has to be done through a Gift Adjustment. If the accounting team makes the changes in FE, what happens to the Gift Adjustment on the RE side. By the way, I posed this question to my accounting manager and her response was that she would post the adjustment in Raiser's Edge but then delete the adjustment in FE while it's in the open Journal Entry. Does this make sense? If done this way, I'm afraid it increases our chances of data entry error. If you haven't already guessed, I'm strongly opposed to making changes to gifts in the open Journal Entry batch except when it's absolutely necessary. However, I will agree to this if I can be given assurances that it is an efficient and accurate practice.

Different story. I would agree with you that the gift adjusmtment needs to be followed through on. I can't believe auditors would be happy with what accounting proposes. But perhaps I am missing something since I do not handle the FE side, only the RE side. We have a clear division of duties, in that accounting cannot enter data or do anything in RE except run the posting and development is not allowed access to FE. Denise Stengl School Sisters of St. Francis Milwaukee, WI [Email Removed]

Denise, you are awesome. Thanks for your thoughtful responses to my questions. If it's not too much trouble, would you mind getting someone from your accounting team (who uses FE) to weigh in? I sometimes feel as a non accountant and non FE user, I don't have the credentials to get the buy I need. [i]--- Edited at 12/12/2005 2:51:47 PM by Leena Jones[/i]

I am also wondering if some "behind the scenes" linking would be messed up by this? Denise Stengl School Sisters of St. Francis Milwaukee, WI [Email Removed]

Good point.