A reminder again that e-base is not an accounting program -- it is a relationship development tool. Accounting programs track income and expense as well as assets and liabilities -- activities of the entire organization. E-base tracks activities generated by contact with our members/donors.
One thing we do with members/donors is receive gifts of money, stock or other in-kind items. E-base tracks certain business expenses as they relate to obtaining the gifts -- cost of mailing appeals and newsletters and the cost of putting on events. Again, the expenses relate to the business of developing relationships with our members/donors. The purpose of tracking expenses in e-base is to help us evaluate the cost effectiveness of our relationship building activities. Your accountant probably is recording expenses in general categories like postage and printing, allocated to the membership program and possibly more specifically into program activities like appeals, newsletter, fundraising events. In e-base you are tracking the cost of particular activities - printing and mailing your 1st quarter appeal, and then your 2nd quarter appeal, and then your December fundraiser, and then your newsletter, etc. Ebase is not designed to track other expenses like the cost of rent and utilities. Your accountant may allocate those costs to your program; however, that is a function of the accounting program and would be extraordinarily ineffective to attempt to track in e-base. E-base tracks whether we've asked a member to call their senator, whether we've e-mailed them an action alert, and what their interests are. Accounting programs do not track this information. Where your accounting program and e-base intersect and must reconcile is in the recording of revenues from fundraising/membership. It is easiest if the membership/fundraising deposits are made separately from any other revenue sources such as sales of merchandise in a store (not at a fundraiser), or interest or rental income. The e-base deposit report would match the accounting records for those deposits. Probably the revenue or membership/fundraising as shown by the accounting program would match the monthly receipts recorded in e-base. You should work with your accountant to match the categories you use in e-base with the categories used in the accounting program. Multi-year pledges are more difficult and I'm not going to go into how that's handled if you are on the accrual basis for accounting. Again, what is important to your accountant is somewhat different from what is important to you (membership). You need to coordinate with your accountant so that you both record things similarly. I record in e-base the value of the stock at its book value when received (this should correspond to the stated value as revenue in the accounting system). I usually consider this as a deposit into an investment account (as opposed to a checking account) and do a deposit report to reconcile with the accounting. Once the stock is received, it is an asset. Value fluctuations through sale or unrealized gain/loss are not appropriate for e-base because the gains/losses are probably attributed to miscellaneous revenue accounts rather than membership or contribution revenue, i.e. not your problem. Stock gains and losses are not functions of your relationship with your donors, which is another reason it shouldn't be in e-base. ***OK -- here's the standard caveat -- please check with your accountant or tax advisor as to the function of e-base in your organization, reconciling e-base with the accounting program, and valuing stock donations. I am not a CPA and you cannot rely on my statements.*** Vicki Sola Development Coordinator Inland Northwest Land Trust phone: 509-462-1239 fax: 509-328-4733 ------------------ Reminder to each recipient: To change your list account preferences, go to http://email.sparklist.com/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=support and enter the email address you used to subscribe to the ebase support list:: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- ebase - Relationship Management for Nonprofits, http://www.ebase.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------
