Could anyone offer any insight into how their organization handles multi-year sponsorship contracts? We typically put future fiscal years into Accounts Receivable and Deferred Revenue but we think it overstates our assets and liabilities. Does anyone have a method of entering the future years into Tessitura without necessarily creating a journal entry into the deposit?
Terra-
We only recently started entering and tracking our sponsorship awards in Tessitura because we previously couldn’t figure out a way to “hijack” the devo module functionality to accommodate the different income recognition rules for sponsorships vs. contributions. For example, often our multi-year sponsorships are front loaded on the payment side but are straight-lined on the revenue recognition side. The only way we could figure out a way to get the sponsorships in Tessitura but not upset or double up the accounting side of things, is to create a separate sponsorship fund where ALL FIVE of the GL’s are tied to the Default GL account (or some other GL account that would stick out that you wouldn’t necessarily post to) and also create an “other” payment method tied to that same GL account (We called ours “Pmts Billed and Received by Acct”). That way the sponsorship can enter under each campaign the amount of sponsorship revenue that will ACTUALLY be recognized in that FY without respect to payment terms. The debits and credits should all net out to zero on the posting. We also asked the sponsorship department to post all sponsorships to the sponsorship fund in a separate batch that can be posted by itself to make sure no accounting entry was generated. So we have three postings some days: One for ticketing, one for devo and one for sponsorships. Then the actual billing and recording of sponsorships can be done in the accounting system per the contract terms the way it always has been done but the Sponsorship and Devo departments have access to all of a constituent’s activity and can report on annual totals without coming to accounting to get a sponsorship total to add to contributions. If you want to discuss further please feel free to give me a call. Thanks and good luck!
Kelly Corley | Controller
AT&T Performing Arts Center
2100 Ross Avenue, Suite 650 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214-978-2817 | F 214-954-9936
kelly.corley@attpac.org | www.attpac.org
AT&T Performing Arts Center is proud to present a wonderful line of programming Call 214.880.0202 or visit www.attpac.org for tickets!
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