Author Topic: Incorrect Contribution date for Pay later transactions? NCS (Read 722 times)

joanne · January 09, 2011, 04:28:40 am

We have been thinking of shifting from the proprietary system we use to CiviCRM. As part of our evaluation process we have just started taking registrations for a series of events (seminars and workshops with different accounting codes) using civiEvents. We encourage online CC payment but will accept a registration on a pay later (by cheque or EFT) basis.

I had assumed that when we processed a "Pay later" Cheque or EFT the date of the contribution would be set to the actual date the payment is processed. This is consistent with the Cash Accounting method which we use. (We have good reasons for using this method, but no need for explanations here)

This is not the case however. The contribution date is set to the original registration date (consistent with the Accrual Accounting method).

This creates a real problem for us as I can't use the Bookkeeping transaction report to extract income data for uploading to our accounting package as the income totals for each day will not be correct for our system.

The proprietary CRM we are using at the moment lets you choose between cash accounting and accrual accounting as part of the initial set up. Have I missed an option somewhere in CiviCRM? Is there a box I can tick somewhere to set things so that contributions are dated with the day they are processed rather than the day they were promised/incurred?

If not we will need to customise civiCRM to operate that way. To me it doesn't sound like it should be very complicated to make the change but I could be wrong. Any advice would be appreciated (including the location of the code we will need to change).

joanne · January 09, 2011, 09:19:05 pm

Firstly, please accept my apologies, I didn't investigate things carefully enough before my post on this subject.

I will be more careful next time.

I can see now that the person processing the payment can choose which date to use for the contribution date, it is just that the default date is the registration date rather than the payment date.

For registrations for our HP seminars that will be good enough I think, but if we switch all our membership to civiCRM we may still want to modify the code so that the default date is set to the payment date to reduce the chance of operator error.

Would this be something that others in the civiCRM community would be interested in? If others also have this issue, we could perhaps come up with a modification that would form part of, say, the CiviContibute set up with a radio button select between Cash or Accrual accounting which will set the default date for pay later payments to the payment date or the promise/registration date? If no-one else uses Cash accounting or allows Pay later payments then we will just do a local code fix.

Dave Greenberg · January 10, 2011, 03:48:37 pm

A group of folks in the community have been hashing out a series of improvements for CiviCRM accounting integration, some of which are directly related to the specific issue you are raising here. There's a wiki page which covers of a lot of the discussion and includes the current proposal for a new data model at the bottom:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Finance+and+Accounting

A key part of the "next phase" implementation will be separating "promises to pay" from "payments made" which I think will "fix" your issue. Folks are waiting word on a key sponsorship commitment for seed funding - hopefully that happens this week. At that point a new Make it Happen campaign will be launched to raise the remaining funds. Would be great if your organization can participate in this.

joanne · January 10, 2011, 04:41:54 pm

Thanks for pointing me to the CiviAccounts proposal. This addresses some of the concerns we have with shifting to CiviCRM. e.g. getting the contributions data out with enough details to satisfy our bookkeeper, being able to apply one cheque to multiple items, handling refunds. I will certainly keep my eye out for a Make-It -Happen campaign.

As far as I am concerned this topic could be deleted if you agree. It basically arose because of a lack of attention to details on my part. Sorry for wasting your time.

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Author Topic: Incorrect Contribution date for Pay later transactions? NCS (Read 722 times)

joanne

Incorrect Contribution date for Pay later transactions? NCS

joanne

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Dave Greenberg

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joanne

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