First Posting Meeting Prep:

  • Schedule First Posting Meeting
  • Prepare a listing of any new funds that were established in the period you will be posting
  • Create a listing of new gifts and/or any fund level transactions for the period (Use Transaction Simple Template!)
  • Gather investment manager statements for the period you will be posting. 
  • If you have the Manager Module, you can use the Manager Activity Template to import your manager data. 
  • If posting spending distributions/administrative fees: Review reports to confirm correct calculations

 

The First Posting Meeting:

Approximate time: 1 hour - 1.5 hours 

Objective: To guide you through the process of how to post activity, reconcile, and successfully close your first period within Balance.

 

This meeting puts you in the driver’s seat as your Implementation Partner assists you through your very first posting of a period within Balance! During this meeting you will set up new funds, add fund level transactions, and enter investment activity, allowing you to get familiar with your new database and ask any questions that you may have along the way. This meeting also allows the opportunity to ensure that your database is set up as you need it be.

 

60 minutes: Walkthrough of the posting process

Review the Closing Process Checklist (found on the Balance Home screen under “Helpful Links”) and work together through each step to close the current period within Balance:

  • Set up new funds:  If a donor establishes a new endowment fund for your current open period, you must first add the fund in Balance. Once the fund is established in Balance, you can add transactions (such as your new donor gift) to the fund. Click here for instruction on how to add a fund. 
  • Make income (spending) distributions (if applicable):  If you need to apply spending to your endowment to reduce fund values, you will need to create a distribution or add distribution transactions manually. Instructions on how to post distributions can be found here.
  • Add transactions: Enter any new gifts, transfers and fees to your pool by entering the appropriate transactions. Transaction Simple Template makes it easy to add to your database! 
  • Enter investment activity: You will need to populate the investment activity for the open period you are working in, using numbers from your investment manager statement(s). Instructions can be found here.
  • Reconcile: Once all activity has been entered and posted, and the reconciliation has a zero balance, the period can then be closed. When the period is closed, Balance will automatically allocate the appropriate earnings to each of the funds participating in that pool.

 

15 minutes: Overview of reporting

Once a period is closed within Balance, you can run a whole suite of reports:

  • Review the three types of reports (standard, user-defined, and custom) available, how to access and/or create them, and how to save favorites within the “Frequently Used” folder 

 

15 minutes: Additional training discussion and wrap up 

  • Additional Training: Discuss any areas that additional training may be needed
  • Wrap up: Answer any remaining client questions and discuss next steps 

 

Next steps:

  • Review any GL exports created, or send example to your Implementation Partner of any you would like set up
  • Provide your Implementation Partner with any questions you may have
  • Prepare for your transition to Support
  • Continue reconciling and posting subsequent periods on your own (but feel free to reach out to us if you need any help!)
  • Run and review period reports to ensure they look as expected


Learn our lingo | First Posting Meeting:

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

 

Standard reports: Reports that are built on set templates and available as a standard report within all databases. 

 

UDR (User Defined Report):  A tool allowing users to create new reports by selecting fields from existing data sets.  The report can be designed to sort, group, and apply filters as desired.

 

Post Date: Determines which posting period your transactions will be posted to in your database when closing out the period.

 

Distributions: Sometimes referred to as spending, draw, proceeds, or endowment appropriation (this is in line with the new ASU endowment footnote disclosure). Distributions are determined by the institution’s spending policy. Typically, it comes from investment earnings/income that is either to be spent or reinvested per the donor restrictions in the gift agreement. The frequency and calculation of the distribution varies and is also determined by the spending policy.

 

Data source/Dataset: A Data Set, commonly called Data Source, is a group of fields that is assembled to build User Defined reports.  There are standard data sources as well as custom; this can vary by database. There is no limit to the number of reports that can be built off of each data source. See the fields available in the current data sources here.