Payroll Deductions

eTapestry Best Practices: While eTapestry cannot access your account department or the employee’s bank account in order to pull money from their check, it can track the money that is donated from their paycheck so that you can query and report on that information later.

To track payroll deductions, you can use a gift, pledge, or recurring gift schedule. In order to pick the best option to track your employees' payroll deductions, consider the following scenarios:

Use a gift if the employee only wants to divert part of their paycheck as a donation one time.
Use a pledge if the employee wants to donate $1000 to the organization through payroll deduction. This way each payroll deduction is entered in as a payment to a $1000 pledge until they reach their goal.
Use a recurring gift schedule if the employee doesn't have an end goal in mind and wants to continue to donate over time.

Preparation

You will need to do some database configuration in order to help you manage these unique types of transactions. You will create an approach called “Payroll Deductions” so you can track each transaction with that information and query and report on them later.

Starting the Process

There are three different options for entering payroll deductions, as mentioned above: one-time gift, pledge, or a recurring gift schedule.

Employee wants to pledge a particular amount

From the employee's constituent record, click Journal.
Click Add. The Add Journal Entry screen appears.
Select Gift/Pledge. The New Gift/Pledge page appears.
In the Date field, set the date to the day the employee confirms they want the payroll deduction.
In the Pledged Amount field, enter the full amount the employee wants to donate.
From the Fund drop down field, select the Fund where the donations will be applied.
From the Approach drop down field, select Payroll Deduction.
Complete the pledge details. For more information about items on this screen, refer to Add a Pledge Screen.
Under Pledge Information, click Create Pledge Schedule.
1. Under Process Type, select Manual.
2. Under Schedule Information, select Standard.
3. From the Frequency drop down field, select how often the donor makes payments.
4. Set the First Installment Date to the date their first deduction will take place.
5. Set the Installment Amount to how much the donor wants deducted from their paycheck to pay off their pledge.
To save the pledge, click Save And.

Employee wants to give on a recurring basis

From the employee's constituent record, click Journal.
Click Add. The Add Journal Entry screen appears.
Select Recurring Gift Schedule. The New Recurring Gift Schedule page appears.
In the Date field, set the date to the day the employee confirms they want the payroll deduction.
In the Installment Amount field, enter the full amount the employee wants to donate per paycheck.
From the Fund drop down field, select the fund where the donations will be applied.
From the Approach drop down field, select Payroll Deduction.
Complete the recurring gift schedule details. For more information about items on this screen, refer to Add a Recurring Gift Schedule Screen.
Click Schedule Information.
1. Under Process Type, select Manual.
2. Set the First Installment Date to the date their first deduction will take place.
3. From the Frequency drop down field, select how often the donor makes payments.
To save the recurring gift schedule to the employee's account, click Save And.

Using Mass Update to add Payroll Deductions for Pledges or Recurring Gifts

Now that you've set up your employees' payroll schedules as pledges or recurring gifts, we can start thinking about how to add the payroll deductions that they give. You can either do this manually each time you receive their deduction or you can utilize our mass update feature.

Mass Update is a two part process, and it will be different based on how you set up their payroll deduction schedules. First, we need to create a query that contains every employee that needs to have a transaction added. Then, we can use that query to run a mass update to add payments or recurring gifts to their schedule.

Part 1: Creating the Queries

The queries that you will create should contain everyone with payroll deductions, based on the date that they give. The idea is that you will run these Mass Updates on the date that you receive their payroll deductions. In these example queries, we’re using the date of “Today,” since that's when we received their donations.

Create a query for pledges

From Queries, click Manage Queries.
Next, click Event Queries. The Edit Query Category page appears.
Under Tasks, click New Query.
In the Name field, enter "Pledges with Payroll Deductions Due Today." The name of the query should be as specific as possible so that you and other users in your organization know what the query is for.
Set the Starting Query to Pledges and Payments - All Open Pledges - A.
On the Data Return Type field, set the type of results to Journal Entries.
In the Criteria Matching field, select Match each criteria, so that all of your criteria will be matched in the results.
Under Criteria, select Commonly Used Fields in the drop down field.
In the list of available fields, click Approaches and select Check Off Payroll Deduction.
In the list of available fields, click Scheduled Payment Date and set the range type to Today.
To view query results, select Preview in the drop down field and click Save And.

Create a query for recurring gift schedules

From Queries, click Manage Queries.
Next, click Event Queries. The Edit Query Category page appears.
Under Tasks, click New Query
In the Name field, enter "Recurring Gift Schedules with Payroll Deductions Due Today." The name of the query should be as specific as possible so that you and other users in your organization know what the query is for.
Set the Starting Query to Base - All Constituents - A.
On the Data Return Type field, set the type of results to Journal Entries.
In the Criteria Matching, select All of My Criteria so that all of your criteria will be matched in the results.
Under the Criteria, select Commonly Used Fields in the drop down field,.
In the list of available fields, click Approaches and select Check Off Payroll Deduction.
In the list of available fields, click Scheduled Recurring Gift Date and set the range type to Today.
To view query results, select Preview in the drop down menu and click Save And.

Part 2: Running the Mass Update

Mass Update will allow us to add new payments or recurring gifts to their schedules.

Mass Update Pledges

From Management, click Mass Update.
Under Create New Items, click Create New Scheduled Payments.
Under Select Query, select the category in which the query was built, and choose Pledges w/ Payroll Deductions due Today - JE in the Query drop down field.
Under What is the Scheduled Gift Date?, fill in the Scheduled Payment Date field with today’s date.
Under Enter Payment Details, you can:
1. To prevent non-admin users from making changes to the entry once it is created, select Final.
2. Since the query is pulling Recurring Gift Schedules that need payments due today, set the Actual Gift Date field to today’s date.
3. If needed, include any additional information in the Note field.
4. Mark any User Defined Field if needed.
To preview the mass pledges update, click Next.
To view the pledges that will be updated, click View Report. Make sure the report only contains the constituents pledges you need.
To run the mass pledges update to add all payments to pledges, click Next.

Mass Update Recurring Gift Schedules

From Management, click Mass Update.
Under Create New Items, click Create New Scheduled Payments.
Under Select Query, select the category in which the query was built, and choose Recurring Gift Schedules with Payroll Deductions due Today - JE in the Query drop down field.
Under What is the Scheduled Gift Date?, fill in the Scheduled Payment Date field with today’s date.
1. Since we are adding the recurring gifts to the recurring gift schedule today, we want to fill in today’s date in this field
Under Enter Payment Details, you can enter information about the payment.
1. To prevent non-admin users from making changes to the entry once it is created, select Final.
2. Since the query is pulling Recurring Gift Schedules that need payments due today, set the Actual Gift Date field to today’s date.
3. Include any additional information in the Note field.
4. If needed, select user defined fields.
To preview the mass pledges update, click Next.
To view the recurring gift schedules that will be updated, click View Report. Make sure the report only contains the constituents you need.
To create Recurring Gifts on those Recurring gift schedules, click Next.

Stopping Pledges/Recurring Gifts for Payroll Deductions

If someone wants to stop giving or has left the organization, you will need to edit their pledge or recurring gift schedule so that eTapestry knows the employee has stopped giving on that schedule. For more information about stopping pledges and recurring gift schedules, see Writing off a Pledge and Stopping a Recurring Gift Schedule.