Donations, Grants, Fundraisers & Other Revenue

You may track revenue from donations, grants, fundraisers, scholarships and other sources separately from normal child care tuition. In some cases, these funds may be set aside and used for specific purposes.

GL Numbers for Donations, Grants, etc.

You may wish to add new General Ledger account numbers to your Chart of Accounts, such as:

a. A generic revenue account like “Grants, Donations and Fundraisers” or separate, more specific revenue accounts for each category. Money given to Provide Scholarships to children often would have a separate account number.

b. If you wish to track the remaining balance available, create an asset account like “Grant Funds” or “United Way Funds”. Be sure to assign the asset to both your list of Bank Accounts and Deposit Accounts, so you may deposit funds to it and write checks against it. This would not apply to scholarships, since scholarships are credits given to specific children/families.

Choose Family Accounting or Make a Journal Entry

There are two basic methods for recording revenue from donations, grants, fundraisers or other sources.

a. If you want the funds to be included on Deposit Reports, you’ll record the revenue in the Family Accounting module. You may track the amounts as a lump sum or family by family. See: Family Accounting – Below

b. If you have the Expenses & Ledger module, and don’t need the funds to show on a Deposit Report, you could make a journal entry instead. This is a quick way to enter the revenue as a lump sum. See: Make a Journal Entry (Example 1)
(https://procaresupport.com/make-journal-entry-general-journals/)

Family Accounting

1. At the Charge / Credit Descriptions screen:

   1. On the Other Charge tab set up Descriptions like “Donation”, “Grant”, etc. and assign them to the GL Account(s) you previously created.
      

   2. Optional: If you want reports to show the money received separate from other payments by check or cash, go to the Payment tab and create Descriptions like “Donation Payment”, “Grant Payment”, etc.
      

2. Choose whether to record lump sum or family by family totals.

   1. Lump Sum Totals: To track totals for all families added together, enter a New Family called something like “Donation Revenue” (first name “Donation”, last name “Revenue”). Post a “Donation” charge and “Donation Payment” (or Pmt by Check, Cash, etc.) for the full amount received on the Ledger Card.
      

   2. Family Totals: To track individual family contributions, post a “Donation” charge and “Donation Payment” (or Pmt by Check, Cash, etc.) on the Ledger Card of each family.
      

   Hint: To track donors who do not have children at the center, enter each donor as a new family and Create a Tracking Item called “Donor”. You could even send fund raising letters (using Letter Merge) to people in the “Donor” group.

3. On Deposit Reports choose to deposit the funds to a separate asset account (like “Grant Funds”) or your regular bank account or split up the deposit any way you like. Scholarship deposits would typically go to your regular bank account.
   

Note 1: Use a separate asset account if you wish to track the remaining balance of these funds as they are used. Once deposited, record the money spent when you make Payments to a Vendor by selecting this asset as the Checkbook from which to deduct the funds. For amounts owed to your school, such as scholarship subsidies, you may periodically transfer those amounts either by writing a check or entering a journal entry to move the funds from the Grant Funds account to your Primary Checking account. This maintains an accurate balance in your Grant Funds account.
Note 2: Since Bank Statement Reconciliation is done separately for each asset, having a physically separate bank account is ideal. If you have a single bank account and just break out the assets on paper, reconciliation could be quite complex and you would never have a true, combined ending balance.