With Virtuous Payments, you have the option to ask donors to cover the processing cost of their gift on top of the donation amount they give. This means your donors can increase their gift to cover the credit card processing fee, so the full gift amount goes toward your Projects! The option to cover fees for a gift is up to the supporter, but you're able to turn this feature on when creating a Page in Legacy RaiseDonors.
In order to reconcile your bank deposits from Payments and what you see in Legacy RaiseDonors, we have set up a Project for Virtuous Payments to automatically capture the covered costs associated with a donation (based on the rate for their payment method) so that the amount the donor gave to a particular Project is accurate at the time of reconciliation. This Project (Covers Processing Fees Project) will only account for the credit card fees collected by Payments and syncs across both Legacy RaiseDonors and Virtuous CRM+ to provide accurate reporting on both platforms.
To access this, navigate to the Setup of your Page that is integrated with Virtuous Payments. Here, you'll find the section to ask donors to cover processing fees. When Yes is selected, you'll then find the fields to display a message to your donors and the option to place the fee into a specific Project. Once enabled, you can also write a message to help donors understand what this fee is, and choose the Project this fee goes into.
How will this affect the project sync in Virtuous CRM+?
Organizations using Payments in Legacy RaiseDonors integrated with Virtuous CRM+ will be able to sync this Covers Processing Fees Project to the Donor Paid Cost project in Virtuous CRM+. Credit card gifts that are processed and imported into Virtuous CRM+ will have a project split with the fees designated to this specific admin Project.
With this, you will be able to accurately report on the amount actually raised for the specific Project the donor chose to give to. By separating the processing cost from the actual Project the donor gave to, you will be able to accurately report on the amount raised for a particular Project.
Can I choose to not use this Project?
While you have the option to choose which Project this fee goes to, we STRONGLY recommend using a Project like "Covers Processing Fees" or some designated admin Project. Using Reconciliation in Virtuous CRM+, it is essential that you use a Project such as “Covers Processing Fees” for accurate reporting on the actual amounts designated to a particular project.
If you decide to NOT follow this best practice (ie: not split fees into a separate Project), your reconciliation reporting will not show the same amount as the balances shown in your Projects in Legacy RaiseDonors OR in your Project reporting in Virtuous CRM+. Your reporting will not accurately reflect the true amounts raised for a Project at the time of reconciliation.