Paying a Pledge with a Soft Credit

There are times where it's handy to be able to offset a pledge balance with a soft credit. I can think of at least one important case where this would make sense: if a donor makes a pledge, and then satisfies that commitment by channeling funds through some other organization (e.g. a family foundation). The chronology would look something like this:

1. Donor makes a pledge
2. Pledge is paid by the donors family foundation
3. Donor is soft credited for the payment amount

The problem here is that, depending on how you set up this chain of transactions, the original pledge may still have a balance. Fortunately, there's an easy solution. If you link the soft credit to the original pledge so that the pledge is the master transaction for the soft credit, in GN v3.5(+?) the pledge balance will be lowered by the amount of the soft credit. If you're running GN v3.0 then you'll need to make the minor modification outlined below.

To link the soft credit to the original pledge, navigate to the soft credit, and from the overview layout, click the "Link" button in the Master Transaction pane. Enter some search criteria to locate the original pledge, and from the resulting list, click the "plus" button to link the soft credit transaction to the appropriate pledge.

Modifying GN v3.0 so that these soft credit transactions will affect the pledge balance.

Note that if you do not modify GN v3.0 as specified here, linking a soft credit transaction to a pledge transaction will *not* affect the pledge balance at all.

Open GN v3.0 with the admin [Full Access] account and navigate to gnTRANSACTIONS. Go to "Manage Database" and locate the field "PledgeBalance". Change the calculation for this field from:

  Case(TransType="Pldg"; 
             zz_AmtPledge-Sum(_Self_IDTRANS_to_IDMASTERTRANS::zz_AmtGift)
                               -Sum(_Self_IDTRANS_to_IDMASTERTRANS::zz_AmtPWO);
        "") + 0

to

  Case(TransType="Pldg"; 
             zz_AmtPledge-Sum(_Self_IDTRANS_to_IDMASTERTRANS::zz_AmtGift)
                               -Sum(_Self_IDTRANS_to_IDMASTERTRANS::zz_AmtSoftCredit)
                               -Sum(_Self_IDTRANS_to_IDMASTERTRANS::zz_AmtPWO);
        "")

You should be able to copy/paste the text from the second calculation into your calculation dialog box.

That should do the trick!