Gift entry/thank-you process....help?

I'm writing to see how all of you manage your gift entry and acknowledgment letter process. 

Here at the Kansas City Symphony, it was determined when we converted to Tess in 2006       that I would do a separate batch for each TYPE of gift "bundle" for each date.....so for example, lockbox checks dated 6/15/09 would be a batch, daily checks for 6/15/09 would be a separate batch, credit cards for 6/15/09 would be a batch, lockbox checks dated 6/16/09 would be a DIFFERENT batch (as I am required to use the date on the lockbox/daily check report/etc. as the contribution date AND posting date, which often requires me to back date batches.)  I believe this was decided to somehow help finance keep track of things and make it easier to reconcile.

Besides the obvious issue of having so many batches per day, each batch may have various types of acknowledgment letters.  This is a huge issue when running the acknowledgment report since it is based on gift date and letter type.  I have to spread out ALL the 6/15/09 batches on my desk and determine which letters are in which batches and how many of each there are (to verify that one was not inadvertently missed).  We merge our letters into Word, FYI.

What I think I recall hearing from other Tessitura people is that they will have one batch per day....they open a batch in the morning and anything that comes in THAT DAY will go in it.....credit cards, pledges, lockbox checks, daily checks....everything, and that the contribution date for those gifts will be the current day and the posting date will also be the current day.

Can you all share your process for gift entry/acknowledgment letters?  Or any suggestions we might use to make our process more stream-lined?  Our process has become unmanageable since I am the only person responsible for this, and our process is no longer efficient and effective, especially with the continually growing number of donors. 

Thank you!

Marcy Osburn, Donor Information Specialist, Kansas City Symphony

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Marcy, that does seem like a lot of extra work! At the Guthrie we essentially follow the "one batch per day" system you describe. There are usually two or three of us entering contributions on any given day, but we each just do one comprehensive batch, unless there is need for a separate adjustment batch or some other special case that seems best handled on its own. All batches are posted together the following morning.

I think the standard Tessitura reports separate out payment methods quite clearly, so I can't imagine why they would need to be in different batches, although this is something you would need to work out with your finance people. Dates might be another question, but couldn't you at least combine items with the same date into one batch? I think it's at least worth having a conversation about it. We went live with Tess last September, and I think the single batch system has been working well for us. We also just went through our annual audit, and I don't think they had concerns about this system.

I generate all of the acknowledgments for our department, and one tool that has been HUGELY helpful is a simple custom report we call the Unprinted Ack Letter Report. It summarizes all of the acknowledgments that have been cued up but not yet printed. We have a LOT of acknowledgment types, and this both saves me from having to check every type every day, and prevents me from missing any. I run it each morning. When I run the Print Acknowledgment Letters report, I use wide date parameters to be sure to catch anything that was backdated. I save merged letters with the date the contributions were processed, regardless of the date applied to them. (Usually it's the day before I run the letters.)

A long response, but I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have. I have spent a lot of time with the acknowledgment system, in particular, and would be glad to share whatever tricks I've developed. Good luck!

Sarah

Sarah,

Do you know if that custom report is available as a Shared Report?  I'm sure that it would make Marcy's life much easier and I'd love to suprise her with it next week :)

Clean Clean DocumentEmail MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

We operate on more of the one batch per day method. However, particular types of transactions might be segregated into a separate batch, such as RSVP's to a particular event. The only reason to do this is to make it easier to find paperwork later, if needed, because we store paper files by batch.

We have a report that looks for all unprinted acknowledgments. The InfoMaker report uses the following query (a local procedure), which returns customers with unprinted letters, with campaign name, contributed and receved amounts, and the name of the letter:

select a.customer_no,
a.trn_dt,
c.esal1_desc,
isnull(c.esal2_desc,' ') as 'esal2_desc',
d.lname,
a.camp_desc,
a.cont_amt,
a.recd_amt,
b.description
from t_ack_ext a (nolock)
join t_format_info b (nolock) on a.letter_id = b.id
join vxs_ cust_sal c (nolock) on a.customer_no = c.customer_no
join t_customer d (nolock) on a.customer_no = d.customer_no
where a.printed_ind <> 'Y'

Lucie

================================
Lucie Spieler
IT Development and Training Manager
Editor, Season Program
Florida Grand Opera
---------------------------
8390 NW 25th Street
Miami, FL 33122-1504

305-854-1643 x.1521 phone
305-856-1042 fax
800-741-1010 ticket office
lspieler@fgo.org
www.fgo.org

P please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to.

________________________________

From: Tessitura Development Forum on behalf of Sarah Kunze
Sent: Thu 7/2/2009 3:40 PM
To: Lucie Spieler
Subject: Re: [Tessitura Development Forum] Gift entry/thank-you process....help?



Marcy, that does seem like a lot of extra work! At the Guthrie we essentially follow the "one batch per day" system you describe. There are usually two or three of us entering contributions on any given day, but we each just do one comprehensive batch, unless there is need for a separate adjustment batch or some other special case that seems best handled on its own. All batches are posted together the following morning.

I think the standard Tessitura reports separate out payment methods quite clearly, so I can't imagine why they would need to be in different batches, although this is something you would need to work out with your finance people. Dates might be another question, but couldn't you at least combine items with the same date into one batch? I think it's at least worth having a conversation about it. We went live with Tess last September, and I think the single batch system has been working well for us. We also just went through our annual audit, and I don't think they had concerns about this system.

I generate all of the acknowledgments for our department, and one tool that has been HUGELY helpful is a simple custom report we call the Unprinted Ack Letter Report. It summarizes all of the acknowledgments that have been cued up but not yet printed. We have a LOT of acknowledgment types, and this both saves me from having to check every type every day, and prevents me from missing any. I run it each morning. When I run the Print Acknowledgment Letters report, I use wide date parameters to be sure to catch anything that was backdated. I save merged letters with the date the contributions were processed, regardless of the date applied to them. (Usually it's the day before I run the letters.)

A long response, but I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have. I have spent a lot of time with the acknowledgment system, in particular, and would be glad to share whatever tricks I've developed. Good luck!

Sarah

From: Marcy Osburn
Sent: 7/2/2009 1:08:14 PM


I'm writing to see how all of you manage your gift entry and acknowledgment letter process.

Here at the Kansas City Symphony, it was determined when we converted to Tess in 2006 that I would do a separate batch for each TYPE of gift "bundle" for each date.....so for example, lockbox checks dated 6/15/09 would be a batch, daily checks for 6/15/09 would be a separate batch, credit cards for 6/15/09 would be a batch, lockbox checks dated 6/16/09 would be a DIFFERENT batch (as I am required to use the date on the lockbox/daily check report/etc. as the contribution date AND posting date, which often requires me to back date batches.) I believe this was decided to somehow help finance keep track of things and make it easier to reconcile.

Besides the obvious issue of having so many batches per day, each batch may have various types of acknowledgment letters. This is a huge issue when running the acknowledgment report since it is based on gift date and letter type. I have to spread out ALL the 6/15/09 batches on my desk and determine which letters are in which batches and how many of each there are (to verify that one was not inadvertently missed). We merge our letters into Word, FYI.

What I think I recall hearing from other Tessitura people is that they will have one batch per day....they open a batch in the morning and anything that comes in THAT DAY will go in it.....credit cards, pledges, lockbox checks, daily checks....everything, and that the contribution date for those gifts will be the current day and the posting date will also be the current day.

Can you all share your process for gift entry/acknowledgment letters? Or any suggestions we might use to make our process more stream-lined? Our process has become unmanageable since I am the only person responsible for this, and our process is no longer efficient and effective, especially with the continually growing number of donors.

Thank you!

Marcy Osburn, Donor Information Specialist, Kansas City Symphony




This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!