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(4 min read)

General Ledger Reports can be customized to include the exact data you need and be exported for use in your accounting software.

If you have one of our development packages, you are able to run daily, weekly, and monthly reports to find all Pledges, Contributions, and Adjustments that have not yet been posted to your General Ledger.

Your available reports include:

• General Ledger Contributions Report

• General Ledger Pledges Report

• General Ledger Adjustments Report

To get the most out of these reports and to make it easier to match your contributions and pledges to your General Ledger funds and the correct line on your Chart of Accounts, you will want to set up and use General Ledger Funds on your contribution records.
Read more on setting up General Ledger Funds and Cost Centers

Before you begin

The process for posting transactions to your General Ledger includes:

• Customizing your Contributions, Pledges, or Adjustment report to include the columns you need for your accounting software

• Filtering your results to include only the transactions that you are tracking in your General Ledger

• Reviewing your data and making any adjustments or changes needed before exporting

• Exporting your data and marking transactions as Posted

Before you begin posting to your General Ledger, define the process and the kinds of data you want to export to your accounting software.

You should be able to answer these questions:

• How often will you post to your General Ledger? - Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly

• What columns do you need to export to add to your Chart of Accounts? - Your answer depends on your accounting software

• What types of transactions should be posted to your General Ledger? - Payment status is Settled or Deposited, Pledges with the status of Promised, Specific batches, Only cash and check contributions

• Do you want individual transactions or summary totals for specific transaction types?

• Which transactions should be excluded? - Stocks, in-kind, non-bookable Pledges, electronic payments tracked elsewhere

• Do you have a complete audit trail for items like Pledges and Refunds or Adjustments in your transaction records?

• Which items need review for completeness before posting?

• Are you marking transactions as Posted to ensure your contribution records match what is in your General Ledger?

You can read our Success Guide for more help setting up your fundraising records to work with General Ledger reconciliation.

Read our Success Guide

Filtering and customizing General Ledger Reports

Before you export your data, you should customize all three reports to include the data you need to post transactions to your General Ledger. Depending on which report you use, you may want to include columns like:

• Amount, Amount Pledged, or Total Adjustment Amount

• Date Received or Pledge Date

• Settlement Date

• Settlement Batch

• Deposit Date

• Deposit Batch

• Payment Method

• General Ledger Fund

• Cost Center

Save the report configuration to make it easy to export new entries the next time you use the report. You can then use the filters to include or exclude the transactions you want.

You may want to exclude:

• Items already Posted

• Contributions like in-kind, stocks, etc.

• Contributions that are not Settled or Deposited

• Contributions that are settling and being added to the General Ledger outside our system

• Pledges that are not bookable

Read more about tracking the settlement status on contributions

You can also use Group By to include transaction summaries, rather than individual contribution records. If your organization receives hundreds of small donations daily, for example, you can aggregate the data on a daily basis for posting to your General Ledger.

Review and exporting

After you’ve configured the reports and filtered them to include the transactions you wish to post, review the report and make sure the entries are complete and accurate.

Make sure:

• Each transaction includes a Source Code and an assigned General Ledger Fund

• Adjustments or Refunds are matched to the correct General Ledger Fund

• Contributions have a Payment Status of Settled or Deposited

• Pledges are Active, Promised, and Unconditional

If you need to make changes to contributions before you proceed, you can Bulk Edit entries using the General Ledger Contributions report or the General Ledger Adjustments report.

To make changes to Pledges, return to the Pledge details page.
Read more on Pledges

Review and close all batches before posting to your General Ledger.
Read more on Financial Batch Manager

Once you have completed your review, Export the file and mark the records as Posted. This will lock certain fields in the records so that they will always match what you posted to your General Ledger.

After a contribution has posted, you can make edits to the Source Code, General Ledger Fund, and Cost Center by performing a Data Transfer.

Pledges, however, once posted, cannot be changed. To edit the pledge amount, you will need to perform a write-off.

Read more about making adjustments (for Bonterra Development)

Read more about refunds (for NGP)