At first, it may be hard to figure out which financial transaction you need. Below are some condensed definitions of the different types of financial transactions in our system.
Monetary Contribution Received
A donation received from an individual or organization in a monetary form, including checks, cash, credit cards and electronic transfers. Monetary Contributions are added as undeposited funds.
In-Kind Contribution Received
A donation received from an individual or organization in a non-monetary form. This would include donations of computers, office furniture and other material goods. In most jurisdictions, personal donations of time are not considered in-kind donations and do not need to be tracked or reported.
Miscellaneous Income
Misc. income is any income that is not a contribution, most commonly bank interest. Like contributions, misc. income is added as undeposited funds.
Memo Contribution
A contribution transaction with a $0 cash impact. Used for memo purposes on campaign statements. This rarely used transaction is most commonly used for reporting donations that are exempt from limits (such as legal services in some jurisdictions).
Receive Loan
A loan received. In most jurisdictions, the loan must be made by the candidate or a financial institution and personally guaranteed by the candidate.
Expense
Any expenditure of funds, including such things as operating expenses, voter contact, charitable donations and contributions made to other campaigns.
Unpaid Bill
Any debt owed to a vendor that has not yet been paid. Unpaid Bills, also known as Accruals or Accrued Expenses, can be changed into Expenses through the Unpaid Bills financial screen.
In-kind Expenditure Made
Used for reporting a donation of goods or services to another political committee. For example, the donation of a computer or office equipment. This should not be used if there was an expenditure to pay for the donation, instead an expense should be entered with the supported candidate specified.
Make Loan
A cash loan made to another entity. This rare financial transaction most often takes the form of a loan made to another political committee.
Other
Internal Transfer
A transfer from one account to another, for example from a checking to saving account.
Monetary Contribution to Third Party (Memo)
This non-reportable transaction is for tracking donations made to other candidates. For example, you may want to track donations made to your competitor.
REVERSALS
Essentially negatives versions of the transaction types. Should be used carefully and jurisdictions reporting requirements should be carefully reviewed. Unless there is a specific line for reversals on your compliance report, they will show up as a negative on the same line as the main transaction.
Reversed Expense
A negative expense (an addition to your cash-on-hand) For example, a refund from an overpayment would generally be a reversed expenditure. However, some jurisdictions prefer these to be reported as misc. income.
Reversed Unpaid Bill
Generally used for forgiven debts.
Reversed Monetary Contribution Received
Such as a refunded contribution
Reversed In-Kind Contribution Received
Very rare. If an in-kind is returned.
Reversed Miscellaneous Income
Absurdly rare. Anything that might be this could probably also be reported as an expense.
Reversed In-kind Expenditure Made
If your in-kind contribution made is returned/refused.
SPECIAL LOAN RELATED
Loan Repayment
The repayment of a loan received or made.
Loan Interest
A loan interest payment made. Should be entered as it is paid (or payment is received.)
Third party repayment
3rd party repayment is for the rare situations when another party repays the loan rather than the original recipient.
Forgiven
The forgiving of a loan by the lender.
SUB-TRANSACTIONS
Subvendors or Partners are subitemizations of expenses and contributions respectively. They in no way impact cash but rather are essentially used to provided detailed memos.
Subvendors
Most commonly used for payments to credit cards. The credit card company would be the vendor and each individual transaction would be entered as a subvendor itemization. Subvendors are also often used for reimbursements. Note: In some jurisdictions, credit cards should be treated as a separate account rather than a vendor.
Partners
Generally used for a payment from a law firm or other partnership. The donation would be entered as from the partnership and each partner's share would be itemized as a partner subitemization. Note: Contributions from partnerships are not allowed in all jurisdictions.
Access Control is who has the ability to do things in the database. Many times user control is seen as a power issue. Who has the power to make changes in the system? Let’s try not to turn it into a topic for office politics. Access Control simply limits the ability to make human errors. Only the people who will be adding and deleting transactions should have full access.
I have had treasurers who decided to turn off their permissions to delete transactions because they wanted a way to stop themselves before they made a irreversible mistake. If your Volunteer Coordinator is not going to ever enter in a transaction into the system, why does she have the permission setting to do so?
Make sure your Access Privileges make sense for each User.
Types of Permissions
|
Individual/Organization |
determines access to basic contact data. |
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Contributions, In-Kinds & Misc. Income |
determines access to incoming financial transactions. |
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Expenses and Accruals |
privileges determine access to outgoing financial transactions. |
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Other Financial |
privileges determine access to other types of transactions, such as loans. |
|
Budgeting |
privileges determine access to the system's budgeting feature |
Permission Settings
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None |
User cannot view data. |
|
View |
User can view data only. |
|
Add |
User can add new data and view existing data, but cannot modify existing data. |
|
Edit |
User can view, add, and modify database records. |
|
Export privileges can be given to a user regardless of their access level. |
|
Administrative Privileges
Administrative privileges determine the extent to which a user can modify other users' access to the database.
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None |
User cannot add or edit users' privileges at all. |
|
Standard/ Full |
Administrator can add new users and can grant full access to Individual/Organization records, but only none or view privileges for financial data. |
|
Financial |
Administrator can add new data and view existing data, but cannot change existing data. |
Keeping your Users and User Info up-to-date is one of the most important things you can do for your campaign. Each user should have his/her own log-in and password. Yes, even interns and volunteers! Once a staff member leaves the campaign, you should delete them from the system.
To modify a user:
Go to System à Users
Click Modify next to the user’s name.
Complete the information, access permission and click Save at the top.
You receive the check from the contributor; enter it into your system.
Never wait until the filing is due to enter your transactions into the database. You should be entering checks as you receive them. We recommend designating one person or area that receives your checks. They should process these checks when they come in to prevent problems.
As you enter the check, you are looking for several things:
Is all the information on the Individual/ Organization record correct?
Do I have the occupation and employer? Even if it’s not needed, it’s easier to add if you have it rather than looking for it if you need it in the future.
Once you have entered in all of your checks and are ready to take them in to your bank, check your deposit.
We recommend making copies of your checks before taking them to the bank. Manually add the checks on your bank deposit and check them against what you are depositing onto the BackOffice register. They should match.
Following these steps will make your next lesson easier to accomplish!
There is no way to file an accurate FEC report unless you're reconciling. Period.
Reconcile helps to reconcile your BackOffice Financial Register to your Bank Account. By comparing your Bank Account Statement to your Financial Register on a regular basis you will be able to catch various errors (such as duplicated contribution entries) immediately before they become a problem in FEC Reporting.
How do I Reconcile my Bank Account to my BackOffice Financial Register?
1. Go to Financial à Reconcile:
2. Select the bank account you wish to reconcile (if you have more than one) from the Bank Account drop down menu or leave the tab on All Accounts if you want to reconcile all accounts in your Financial Register
3. Enter your bank account Statement Balance. This gives the Reconcile manager a target sum to match to the total of the uncleared contributions.
4. Enter in the date of your bank statement in Statement Date. All uncleared transactions will be listed thru the date given here. If you want to reconcile to an older bank statement simply enter the date on the bank statement here to exclude more recent uncleared transactions.
5. Click the Reconcile button.
6. You should now see a report listing uncleared items on the left side and a Reconciliation Summary statement on the right. You may wish to reorganize the items listed to more closely match your bank statement. Simply click on the hyperlink for Check #, Date, Name or Amount to re-sort. The arrow will tell you how it is being sort. 
7. Compare the transactions in the Uncleared listing against the ones on your bank statement. Click the check box next to the items when you locate them on your Bank Statement. This marks that specific item as cleared.
8. On the right you should see the Reconciliation Summary. As you check off items as cleared, there will be various changes in this information.
Bank Account: Lists the account currently being reconciled
Statement Date:Lists the date of the statement being compared.
Register Total: Lists the total amount of funds in the Financial Register at the given date. This is the total amount that should match your Bank Statement at the end of the reconcile.
UnclearedTotal: This lists the total amount of Uncleared transactions. As you check off items as Reconciled items in the left hand reconciled this number will adjust. When all the items are marked as clear this total will be 0.
Previously Cleared Total: This lists the Previously Cleared Total in the Reconcile Report. (the difference between the Register Total and the Uncleared Total) This shows you the total amount of transactions that have already been cleared in your Financial Register.
Newly Cleared Total: This lists the Total of items currently being reconciled.
Total Cleared: Lists the Total Reconciled amount between Previously Cleared and Newly Cleared Items. When all the items have been cleared this total will match your Register Total.
Statement Balance: Lists the current amount on your statement balance to be matched.
Difference: Lists the difference between the Statement balance and the items cleared. This is the amount of discrepancy between your Bank Account and your Financial Register as of the date listed in Statement Date.
9. When you are finished, click the Reconcile button at the bottom of the page. This will list those specific items as reconciled permanently so be careful not to check off transactions which you have not found on your Bank Statement.
10. If the Difference total is 0 and all items are cleared you know your Financial Register is reconciled to your bank statement.
Ack! My Difference isn’t Zero! What do I do?!?
If there total is not zero when all items are cleared there is a discrepancy between your Financial Register and your bank statement. Most likely a transaction was not entered. Check your bank statement for deposits or expenses that weren’t entered into BackOffice.
If there are remaining transactions Currently Uncleared after clearing all transactions in from the Bank Account statement, check if Difference in the Reconciliation Summary is Zero. If the Difference in the Reconciliation Summary is zero, then the remaining transactions are most likely errors that need to be removed from the system.
If you are reconciling on a regular basis, your government reports should be easy to run. Check out the next lesson to run your reports in advance so that you are not caught off guard about when reports are due.
Many of our clients will run dummy FEC reports. It will assist you in finding and correcting errors and give you a chance to review your report and start making corrections without the stress of the deadline.
Do a test run of your government reports once a month. Look for the following:
List of errors. i.e. Missing Occupation/Employer. Errors are much easier to deal with as they come up once a month rather than a mad rush to send out letters requesting occupation and employer the day before the report is due.
Cash on Hand. Make sure your starting cash-on-hand matches the ending cash-on-hand from the previous report.
Check each column to make sure that your cycle-to-date totals are correct.
When you run this test report each month you are rehearsing for the real thing. Practice makes perfect and it means less amendments and headaches down the road. But what happens if you run your test reports or your final report and things aren’t adding up? Then, it’s time for the last lesson, how to troubleshoot your report.
Lesson 5: Troubleshoot your Report
When things doesn’t match, you can get a bit frazzled. We have designed a couple of reports to show you were mistakes could have been made.
Changed Transaction Report
The changed transaction report is designed to assist in finding discrepancies or transactions that may be causing problems with an FEC or other government compliance report.
To run the Changed Transaction Report:
Click on Reports à Government Reports.
On the bottom of the Government Reports Screen, click on the report: Changed Transaction Report.
Enter the Date previous report was filed. This is the date that you previously filed your last compliance report. For example, your year-end 2004 report may have been filed on 1/12/2005. You would enter in 1/12/2005.
Enter the Close of Previous Filing Period. This is the closing date of your last report. For example, the year-end 2004 year would have the date ”12/31/2004” So you would enter in 12/31/2004.
This report then checks for several things:
1) Created after filing but dated before close.
These are transactions that were first created after the date the report was filed but currently are dated before the close. For example, if you entered a transaction on 1/20/2005 dated 12/28/2004, it would appear in the potential problems list with this alert.
2) Previously dated before close, now dated after.
These are transactions that previously were dated before the close of period and now are dated after the close. It will only report transactions that were most recently edited after the date filed and originally created before the date filed.
For example, if on 12/20/2004, a transaction was entered with the date of 12/20/2004 but on 1/20/2004, it was changed to 1/20/2005, it will appear on this report.
3) Previously dated after close, now dated before.
These are transactions that previously were dated after the close of period and now are dated before the close. It will only report transactions that were most recently edited after the date filed and originally created before the date filed.
For example, if on 1/5/2005, a transaction was entered with the date of 1/5/2005 but on 1/20/2005, it was changed to 12/20/2004, it will appear on this report.
4) Deleted transaction.
Transactions with a date prior to the previous close that were created before the previous report was filed and deleted afterwards will show up on this report (see limitation #1 below).
For example, if on 12/20/2004, a transaction was entered with the date of 12/20/2004 but on 10/15/2005, it was deleted, it will appear on this report.
Limitations:
1) Deletions prior to 10/12/05 will not appear.
2) Not all actions will necessarily be caught by this action
3) Name changes and similar modifications are not caught
4) Subvendors, partner itemizations, loans and other ”minor” transactions will not be caught.
5) Will include some ”false positives”
What to do if this doesn’t help?
Manual review is the only option at that point.