Lesson 6.4 – Processing Pledge Payments

Welcome to Module 6, Lesson 6.4! After a donor has promised a contribution and you have recorded their pledge, the next step in the cycle is collecting the funds. In FastFund Raising, a Pledge Payment is simply a cash receipt that is applied directly against an open pledge balance.

The transaction entry screen for recording pledge payments is the same one used for standard cash donations, making the process highly intuitive. In this lesson, we will explore how to enter a pledge payment, how FastFund alerts you to open balances, and how to distribute payments to specific pledges.

1. Accessing Pledge Payments

Because a pledge payment is a cash receipt, it is recorded in the same area as your regular donations. All pledge payments are automatically posted to the Undeposited Funds holding account until you are ready to process a bank deposit.

Steps to Access the Entry Screen:

1. Select Transactions from the Main Menu.
2. Under the DONATIONS section, click Donations/Receipts.
3. The default transaction Type is Cash Gift. If you are ready to process a pledge payment, change the transaction type in the drop-down menu to Pledge Payment.

2. System Prompts for Open Pledges

FastFund is designed to help you avoid accidentally entering a regular donation when a donor actually intended to pay off their promised pledge.

If you leave the Transaction Type as Cash Gift or Cash Receipt and select a donor who happens to have an open pledge balance, FastFund will automatically intervene. A Pledge Payments button will appear above the Gift distribution area, displaying the exact number of open pledges that donor has. The system will prompt you to select whether you want to enter a payment for the open pledge, or proceed with recording a brand new donation.

If you click the Open Pledge button, all open pledges for that donor will appear at the bottom of the window.

3. Entering the Payment Details

Once you have selected the donor and verified they are making a pledge payment, you must fill out the standard transaction header information:

• Date & Reference: Enter the Date of the payment and a Reference number (usually the donor’s check number or a credit card abbreviation like “M/C”). FastFund will check for duplicate references to prevent double-entry.
• Amount: Enter the total Amount of the pledge payment. The deductible field will automatically auto-fill with this amount.
• Memo: Enter an optional memo, which will appear in the gift history as the Transaction Memo.

4. Distributing the Payment

The biggest difference between a regular cash gift and a pledge payment occurs at the bottom of the screen in the distribution grid.

Because the original pledge transaction already defined the Appeal and the Gift designation, you do not need to re-enter them. In fact, the Appeal drop-down field in the header will be completely grayed out.

Instead, the standard Gift distribution area is replaced with a list of the donor’s open pledges. This list contains the original pledge date, reference number, appeal, total amount, and the current balance due. Tip: You can drill down to view the original pledge transaction by simply clicking on its Reference number.

To Apply the Payment:

1. Locate the specific open pledge in the list.
2. Type the payment amount into the Payment field on that line.
3. If the donor is paying off multiple open pledges with a single check, you can distribute the payment amount across multiple pledge lines until the total transaction amount is fully applied.
4. Select your preferred receipt option (Print or Email) and click SAVE & NEW or SAVE.