Obligations and Credits

Obligations and Credits

• Enables tracking of expected or required fundraising or other efforts by account

Under Campaigns, Setup, Obligations Setup, under the obligation types tab is where you’ll be defining your obligation types.
• Right click, new. You’ll define the type and select a group for it, or type in a new group.
In the right corner, you’ll notice a checkbox for “Requires Direct Apply. “

Setup

1. Obligation types that do not require credits directly applied are also referred to as General Obligations. Open obligations are calculated by totaling all general obligations and measuring it against all credits that are not directly applied. This would be used for obligation types that the expectation is not annual, but rather viewed as a balance in total.

2. Direct Apply obligation types would be used for an organization that expects a certain amount to be raised for each obligation. A surplus of credits for one obligation does not offset the balance of another obligation.

• If it’s a direct apply obligation, you’ll be able to specify credit types that offset the balance, and occasions of pledges that can credit the balance. (See below for details on credit types and financial credits.)

Credit Types

There are two categories of credits
1. Predefined Credit Types
2. Financial – a pledge. The pledge does not need to be from the same account.

Under the ‘Credit types’ tab, you’ll define the non-financial credits which will be used to offset obligations. Type in a description (i.e. Phone calls) and unit value (monetary amount).

Financial Credits
Under the ‘pledge credit’ tab, you can specify occasions which only a percent of the pledge amount will be credited towards the obligation. Right click; specify the occasion and percent value. If not configured at all – 100% gets credited.

Entering Obligations in Bulk

This can be done in the Obligations Admin. You can choose to create obligations per account, per registration (on default account), or per registration on responsible account. Select your filter and search. You can select all records, deselect, or invert selection or simply select one manually. You’ll then choose the obligation to create, date and amount. Press ‘enter obligations’.

Viewing Account Balances and Entering Credits

You can actually view account balances from this screen, on the bottom left of the screen.
Simply enter the account ID or search for the desired account. You can view their obligations and credits here, and add an obligation or credit them, by clicking either “New Obligation” or “New Credit.”

Entering a new credit:
When entering a new credit, you have an option whether to direct apply this credit to an open obligation or just use it to offset the general balance. If it’s a pledge credit, you’ll check “Pledge.” If you are directly applying this credit towards one specific obligation, the pledge dropdown will have any pledges that this account has where the occasions are ones that this obligation supports. However, if you don’t direct apply to the obligation, but rather it’ll be applied to the general balance, all of the account’s pledges will be in the dropdown. The same is if it’s a non-financial credit.

You can credit an account’s obligation with pledges from another account. If you click on the little magnifying glass, you can search for an account or simply type in the account ID without searching. The dropdown will then list this account’s pledges.

You can credit an obligation as you’re creating a new pledge. You’ll notice a little dropdown under “Pledge Links.” If you click on it, you have an option to credit this account or credit a different account.

You can also view balances and add new credit or obligation from the individual account, under the Pledge section. In the right corner of the screen, you can view details, add credit, add obligation…or from the Admin – “View Account Balances.” Choose specific account.

Additional Points

An asterisk (*) denotes an outstanding pledge used as a credit.

There are reports and statements set to view balances by account. See reports: Statements - Obligations and Credits, and Account Obligations and Credits Summary.