Workplace Giving Solutions

 

If the client has a campaign that is a fund raising campaign, the client will have distributions to complete. This is an important part of the campaign process not only to complete the campaign itself, but also to maintain visibility into this part of the process and to maintain the trust that the participants have that their information and donation will be handled correctly.

1.      Going back to a previous best practice article, Closing a Campaign, distributions has a foundation in the closing of a campaign. This foundation is that the campaign was closed out correctly, and the final reports were balanced and all of the credit card transactions were balanced between the account the money was sent to and the reports from the campaign site.

2.      If there is payroll deductions a report must be sent back to the client, with all of the information for the HR and Payroll Departments to put back into your system so that the funds are taken out of the donors’ checks as directed. This is part of another previous article on Scheduling, because this file must be delivered with enough time to be verified and tested as working.

3a. Credit Cards, the distributions are normally handled separately from the payroll deduction distributions. And based on how your credit card transaction flow is setup, will determine the process you need to have to use. For the purposes of this article I am going to briefly outline the process as if WPG receives the credit card funds directly. 

·         The funds are processed in real-time as the user is making their donation/designation.

·         The money is then sent to the WPG account from the credit card company on a monthly basis

·         WPG must balance the transactions from the site with the deposits and reports from the credit card company (for each card type). This is to ensure that all transactions actions that were processed on the site did go thru properly and to ensure that none of the donors disputed the charge for any reason.

·         When the campaign is over, this process is repeated to ensure accuracy and balanced to the reports from the campaign site. There is an appropriate amount of time waited until the funds are approved for distribution, to allow any disputes to come up and be settled.

·         Once that time has elapsed, the funds are approved for release and distribution/acknowledgement reports are created and are checked to ensure they balance with the account balance and site reports

·         Checks are issued and mailed out to according to the distribution routing established in the contract.

·         Check registers are created

3b. Payroll Deductions, the funds are handled differently.

·         Based on the contract’s distribution time frame, a remittance file is sent from the client to WPG. This remittance amount should be balanced with the amount of funds being transferred (either by check, wire or EFT) before being sent to WPG to ensure that the correct amount of money is transferred. If this is not balanced it will cause a delay in the distribution of the funds.

·         WPG receives the remittance file for the specified time period, and balances the remittance file with the transferred funds amount.

·         Distribution/acknowledgement reports are created and balanced back to the remittance file

·         Checks are issued and mailed

·         Check registers are created

4.      Monthly account maintenance, the funds regardless of the transaction type, are usually distributed out of the same bank account. 

·         The account is checked for outstanding checks on a monthly basis, stale dated checks are verified as not received and mailing address is verified and those checks are reissued.

·         Account reconciliation happens on a monthly basis.