More thoughts.....
Is it really necessary to split payments between dues and donations at
the individual member level or could it be done in the accounting
records? If tax deductibility is an issue, the dues portion can be
noted in the non-deductible field and when you total the weekly or
monthly payments for transfer to the accounting records, you could make
the split at that time using a report that gives you the total
non-deductible ("dues") amounts. This avoids the need for two payment
records for each payment. If that doesn't do it, a slight modification
would be to make the split of all payments by simply multiplying $25
times the number of memberships received for the month and record this
in the accounting records.
It is important to understand what the board wants to achieve by making
the split. Do they want two receipts to be issued? Do they want to
highlight the donors and their donations for reporting in some fashion?
Etc. If they just want the information available, you could create two
custom fields on the payment screen and after completing the standard
fields make the split in the custom fields and then design a report that
gives you the amounts from the custom fields.
Gerry A Hodgson
8871 Gay Road
Richmond BC V6Y 2H8
604 271 9877
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Beth Hynes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: February 25, 2002 2:58 PM
To: TechRocks Support
Subject: [support] RE: Reasons for zeroed dues memberships - help
I have no problem with dividing an occasional single check into multiple
accounts. What I'm having trouble fathoming is taking every dues payment
over $25 (and we have a good number of those) and dividing it between
"dues" and "contributions". All of these are members, no non-members in
the bunch (they get treated differently from the get-go).
I remember seeing discussion of the pitfalls of doing that--beyond the
additional data entry. Any more thoughts out there?
Beth
>> Most organizations have several types of accounts. We have a general
>> account (unrestricted), a board restricted account, and several
>> restricted accounts. What you can do with money depends on which
>> account it winds up in. Dues are usually used for running the
>> organzation, salaries, postage, etc. and would paid out of the
>> general account. However someone who contributes may specify that it
>> go into some restricted account. You cannot take some of this and put
>> it in the general account (although some organizations "tax" their
>> restricted accounts to cover the overhead of managing the account).
>> You would certainly want to run any decision past your auditors.
>
>> We get very few contributions from non-members so this is rarely an
>> issue for us. However when we do, we usually play the $0 dues game as
>> you do. The marginal cost of a new (unpaid) member is low enough that
>> we just absorb it. For fundraising purposes, more members looks
>> better so rationalizing on who you include as being a member has
>> intangible benefits.
>
> I need help with a question of counting and accounting. I know this
> topic has been discussed a while ago and I have looked in the archives
> but couldn' t locate it.
>
> We have people who only want to give once a year at a substantial
> level. We need to show them as members and as contributors. I have
> been recording a payment of $0 dues donation with the post date of
> their contribution-so they get counted as a current member and a
> contributor.
>
> Now the board wants to change to recording the first $25 of every
> donation as dues and everything else into the contribution pot. I
> remember on this list people saying that was a bad idea, but I don't
> remember why! (other than breaking my poor head with having to
> remember to do things rather than just plugging data into its place.)
>
>
>
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