Fundriver Balance Knowledge Base

Walkthrough Meeting Prep:

• Schedule Walkthrough Meeting
• Successfully sign into your Balance database
• Familiarize yourself with how to set up your spending rule (This article can get you started!)
• If applicable, familiarize yourself with how to set up administrative fees (This article can get you started!)

The Walkthrough Meeting:

Approximate time: 1 hour

Objective: To provide an overview of how to navigate the Balance software and explore basic site administration, such as setting up users, as well as, discuss potential customization needs (spending/fees/reporting) and activity processing (GL import/export configuration).  

This meeting allows you to get more familiar within your own database, with your own funds and numbers.  

5 minutes: Welcome and overview of Walkthrough meeting

• Welcome: Discuss your status and if you have any questions or concerns that need to be addressed.
• Accessing your database: Show how to access and sign into your database.

40 minutes: Database Tour

Guided tour through your database to see how everything is set up, how to enter transactions, make changes, set up users and give you a better understanding of how your new database works. 

• Home: The landing page when first signing into your database. All recent updates and relevant news can be found here. Also includes a Helpful Links section with links to our Knowledge Base and other helpful tools.
• Organize: Where the bulk of your endowment information resides. Virtually everything from your data load template will be loaded into this section of Balance, and this is where you can easily update/edit endowment fund profile fields if need be. 
• Activity: Where transactions are entered, investment activity is processed, and where you reconcile/close each of your periods. 
• Report: Where all reports are available, including standard, user-defined, and, if applicable, custom. 
• Support/Settings: Where you can find how to contact support, review how your database is set up, and add new users. 

5 minutes: Knowledge Base overview

Discuss how to access our Knowledge Base and search for articles.

10 minutes: Database set up confirmation and wrap up 

• Tie to Financial Statements: Before moving on to your First Posting, it is very important to tie your beginning balances back to your Audited Financial Statements' Endowment Footnote; the Restriction Summary Report is useful for this.
• Spending rules: There are many different options and parameters that you can set up for each spending rule. Check out this article for more information on how to ensure your spending rules are set up properly. 
• Due To/Due From: In order to reconcile and post periods, or because of limitations on how often cash can be transferred, a Due To/Due From fund (or manager if you have the Investment Portfolio module) can be set up to provide better tracking and transparency for your investment activity.
• Changes to database: Identify any changes needed to be made in order to successfully post your first period within Balance. 
• Exports: To facilitate transferring data from Balance to your GL, Fundriver Balance is able to program custom journal entries for your use. If you do not have any GL Exports programmed yet, discuss next steps with your Implementation Partner.
• Wrap up: Answer any remaining client questions and discuss next steps.

Next steps: 

• Test your screen sharing capabilities
• Run spending reports to review your spending calculations and ensure that they are set up properly
• If applicable, run administrative fee reports to confirm they are set up appropriately 
• Familiarize yourself with the Transaction Simple template. 
• If applicable (Manager Module has been purchased), familiarize yourself with the Manager Activity Template. 

Learn our lingo | Walkthrough Meeting:

(Check out a full glossary of commonly used terms and expressions here) 

Due to/Due From: A Fund or Manager (if you have the Investment Portfolio module) that serves as a placeholder for cash-in-transit. These are cash deposits or withdrawals that have either been recorded to or against the funds, but the cash has not yet been received or withdrawn on the investment statement(s). The Due To/Due From Fund is assigned a special code that restricts any earnings from being allocated to it. It also does not flow to the endowment footnote. See this article:  What is Due To/Due From?. For example, a gift is recorded, but money may not have been transferred to the investment pool yet.  A due to/due from is recorded to show that money is owed to the investment pool from operations. Similarly, distributions may be recorded to each endowment, but the funds may not be pulled out of the investment pool the same period they are recorded. A due to/due from is recorded to show that money is due to operations from the pool.

GL Exports: To facilitate transferring data from Balance to a client's general ledger (GL) system, Fundriver is able to program custom journal entries that can easily be exported from the Balance system to mirror the template needed for client's to import into their financial general ledger. Three (3) separate GL Exports are included within a standard implementation and are usually (but not required) set up during the implementation phase.

Posting Frequency: How often a period is reconciled and closed. When closing a period, Balance will use the last day of the month based on the client's posting frequency (monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually). When the period has been closed, it will trigger the allocation of earnings and all transactions will post to that period. Note that your posting frequency may differ than how often you post your spending.