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  • 1.  Financial Reporting Woes!!!

    Posted 01-21-2022 09:43
    We've are entering our fifth year with Cvent and have been thrilled with the improvements it's made to our event management....with one HUGE exception.  The Achilles Heel is reporting - specifically reconciling transactions with our PayPalPro account.  Unbelievably, it is not an option to export a list of actual transaction amounts with assigned GL codes. If 10 people register as a group at $10 each, we get a list of 10 transactions for $10 each - But what we need, and what our finance manager needs to match it up with in PayPalPro, is one transaction for $100.  Yes, we can see that all 10 orders have the same transaction number and the same cardholder name - but we have to go through the list every month and consolidate those transactions as the one $100 amount under the group leader's record. AND - GL codes can only be displayed as an individual order detail, and are associated with transaction reports at all?! Both order amount and transaction amount are options for fields to display - but they are the same number. Basically, Cvent jumps right to allocating the sub-amounts of a transaction to individual orders, but it cannot report on the actual transaction?  Is this a matter of limited access in the integration between Cvent and payment processors? It doesn't make any sense and I have a hard time believing that we are the only organization for which this is a painful design flaw.  How do finance managers out there reconcile their payment processor transactions, both charges and refunds, for bookkeeping???  We basically have to manually build a spreadsheet for importing into Quickbooks every month.  With the level of sophistication in every other feature in Cvent, and the "top-rail" cost, we just can't accept this situation any longer.  I am getting pressure from above to find another platform and the thought of migrating gives me chest pains.....
    #ReportingandInsights

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    Julia Shellhouse
    Administration Manager
    Lean Construction Institute
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  • 2.  RE: Financial Reporting Woes!!!

    Community MVP
    Posted 01-21-2022 10:02
    Julia,,

    I reconcile PayFlowPro to cvent each day there are transactions.
    My cvent report filters by looking at yesterday.
    Every GL code is listed. For our controller, I sort by GL Code and subtotal everything.

    My PayPal reports looks at yesterday, although I set the time range off by 3 hours.
    I sort my PayPal report by credit card type and subtotal each credit card type.

    At least that is how our accounting wants it.
    I have the first name and last name of the person making the payment.

    I'm not familiar with group registrations, and I guess that is what I can't follow.
    Can you explain it differently for me?

    I do have a gripe that GL Codes are not available in cross reports. This makes it difficult for me when I have multiple event registration going on at the same time.

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    Steven Schlossman
    Jack of all trades. Master of none.
    BMW Car Club of America
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  • 3.  RE: Financial Reporting Woes!!!

    Posted 01-21-2022 12:12
    Edited by Julia Shellhouse 01-21-2022 15:24

    Our problem is created when one person enters several registrations and pays for all of them at the same time in one transaction. Our finance manager needs to reconcile the amount of the actual transaction with the payment processor’s export, not the amount for each order.  Another scenario that leads to headaches is during our annual conference [registration is open for about half the year], when someone registers for the core program and adds on "Learning Day" sessions that carry an additional fee.  If the core program costs $500 and the extra session costs $100, we get a report that lists a $500 transaction and a $100 transaction separately. But that's not what actually happened in PayPal - there was one transaction for $600.  That's just a simplified example - there are actually dozens of different ways an order could end up costing the same amount, depending on the admission item, registration type (i.e., fee assigned to the item), early bird fees, etc.  We have to go through hundreds of lines and consolidate orders into actual transaction amounts for importing into Quickbooks. It's a nightmare.  It's like if you went to the grocery several times, and instead of matching up the final totals on your receipts with your bank statement, you get a list of all the items you bought across all your trips to the store, and have to combine the prices of individual items to come up with totals that match the debits to your bank statement. It just seems so simple to me that a transaction report should list electronic transaction amounts as they actually occurred. Even if I can tell what happened by looking at the data, I need a spreadsheet that Quickbooks will accept.  We have 28 “Communities of Practice” around the country, plus our national events - at any given time I can have as many as 30+ active events. At this moment, I have 24. It’s as if Cvent doesn’t have access to the actual transaction information – which does not work for us.



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    Julia Shellhouse
    Administration Manager
    Lean Construction Institute
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  • 4.  RE: Financial Reporting Woes!!!

    Posted 01-21-2022 15:22

    Our problem is created when one person enters several registrations and pays for all of them at the same time in one transaction. Our finance manager needs to reconcile the amount of the actual transaction with the payment processor's export, not the amount for each order.  Another scenario that leads to headaches is during our annual conference [registration is open for about half the year], when someone registers for the core program and adds on "Learning Day" sessions that carry an additional fee.  If the core program costs $500 and the extra session costs $100, we get a report that lists a $500 transaction and a $100 transaction separately. But that's not what actually happened in PayPal - there was one transaction for $600.  That's just a simplified example - there are actually dozens of different ways an order could end up costing the same amount, depending on the admission item, registration type (i.e., fee assigned to the item), early bird fees, etc.  We have to go through hundreds of lines and consolidate orders into actual transaction amounts for importing into Quickbooks. It's a nightmare.  It's like if you went to the grocery several times, and instead of matching up the final totals on your receipts with your bank statement, you get a list of all the items you bought across all your trips to the store, and have to combine the prices of individual items to come up with totals that match the debits to your bank statement. It just seems so simple to me that a transaction report should list electronic transaction amounts as they actually occurred. Even if I can tell what happened by looking at the data, I need a spreadsheet that Quickbooks will accept.  We have 28 "Communities of Practice" around the country, plus our national events - at any given time I can have as many as 30+ active events. At this moment, I have 24. It's as if Cvent doesn't have access to the actual transaction information – which does not work for us.



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    Julia Shellhouse
    Administration Manager
    Lean Construction Institute
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