If you use nonprofit cloud as your single source of truth for your charities donations, you may want to consider implementing an integration or tool to help connect your fundraising with finance. In this article we will discuss the different types of options available and how they can benefit your organisation.
Subledger Integrations
A subledger application can automatically create ledger entries for each donation that is created in your salesforce environment. For example, if a donor has donated £150 and has asked £50 to be allocated to a housing fund and the remaining £100 to be allocated to a hot meals fund, the following ledger records will be created:
| Type | Debit Amount | Credit Amount | Accounting Unit(Fund) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debit | £150.00 | Checking | |
| Credit | £100.00 | Hot Meals | |
| Credit | £50.00 | Housing |
You can also map funds to GL codes and additional values that you require. This data can then easily be exported and then imported into your accounting tool (if your tools allows importing of ledger entries) or you can even opt to automate the process so that entries are automatically created.
This image explains how the Salesforce tool can create subledger records to connect accounting and finance.
Bank File Reconciliation
A finance team, as part of bookkeeping reconciliation will need to use statements from their banks to identify and match payments on their bank accounts with their own internal payment records. This is an important step because donations can sometimes be missing from Salesforce but may show up on a bank statement. One example is if a donation is made directly to a back account but was never spotted and created into Salesforce. This will create discrepancies between the bank and Salesforce.
Doing reconciliations manually can be a slow, painstaking process and can also fall prone to mistakes and human error. This is why you may want to consider implementing a tool like Findock:
Findock is a tool that can be used to easily reconcile your bank statements with Salesforce. It even includes a feature called guided matching that can guide you through the matching process and even help you create missing donations quickly.
Other Types of connectors
There are other types of connectors/integrations available that may be built specifically for your accounting tool.
One example is breadwinner for xero which can be used to easily generate invoices in xero straight from the opportunity/donation record in Salesforce. This can be particularly useful if you raise invoices for donations or provide goods/services.
How to get started
If you are interested in implementing one of the integrations mentioned, or need help deciding what you need, feel free to get in touch with us, we are happy to help or send more resources your way.
