Pledges

Overview

A pledge is a promise of money to the school. Enter the following information for new pledges.

• Person or Organization: Enter either a person or organization (never both). If the pledge was made by an organization (e.g., a matching gift), indicate the organization and leave the pledger field blank.
• Amount: The actual amount of the pledge received
• Pledge Date: The receipt date is used to calculate which fiscal year this pledge is associated with.
• Pledge Increment: If the pledge is gong to be paid in more than one installment, a pledge increment should be entered to indicate how much will be paid for each installment.
• Payment Frequency: The payment frequency controls how many installments will be created and the dates for those installments.
• Start Date: The date for which the first installment should take place.
• Campaign: The campaign with which this pledge is associated
• Fund: The fund with which this pledge is associated.
• Event: If this pledge was made in connection with an event that was setup in the system (e.g., an appeal or fundraiser), you can indicate that in the event field.

Installments

Pledge installments are an explicit definition of the expected payment schedule for a pledge. Most of the time these will not need to be handled manually. The pledge payment schedule is defined on the general tab of the pledge detail screen.  When a pledge is inserted the initial installments are created based on the following input:  pledge amount, start date or pledge date, pledge increment, and the payment frequency.  You can view the individual installments for the pledge by going to the Installments tab. There you can make modifications to the individual installments to create an irregular payment schedule. Note that if you modify any of the parameters for calculating the pledge installments (e.g. pledge amount, pledge increment, etc), all of the individual installments will be removed and then recreated with the new schedule information. So if you modify the individual installments for a given pledge to create an irregular payment schedule, you will want to refrain from modifying any of those parameters unless you really want to regenerate the payment schedule.

Once the installments are set up on the system, you can include them in your queries by selecting the fields from the installments folder of the Pledge query template.

Write-offs

You can write off pledge installments by using the Installments tab on the Pledge detail screen. If a pledge has any write-offs associated with it, the total amount will be reflected in the PTD Write-off field on the general tab of the Pledge screen. Also, write-off amounts will be deducted from the PTD Outstanding amount for that pledge to reflect that the amount written off is not expected to be received for that pledge. The process for this, however, differs, depending on whether or not the pledge installments have been posted.

Writing Off an Unposted Pledge Installment

To write off a portion of (or all of) an unposted pledge installment, perform the following:

Use the Enter a Writeoff section of the installment tab on the pledge record. Enter how much should be written off in the Write Off Amount field, with the date it should be written off in the Write Off Date field. For example: if you wanted to write off $200.00 of an unposted pledge installment today, you would enter $200.00 in the Write Off Amount field and today’s date in the Write Off Date field.

Writing off a Posted Pledge Installment

To write off a portion of (or all of) a posted pledge installment, perform the following:

On the Installments tab of the Pledge record, click the Add Record… button in the input grid. For the installment amount, enter how much should be added to the total installment amount, the Due Date, and the Adjustment Type should be set to Write-off. For example: if you wanted to write off $200.00 of a posted pledge installment, you would need to enter -200.00 in the Installment amount column and set the Adjustment Type as Write-off.