Designations and Payouts

DonorPoint’s Payout engine calculates what is owed to each agency or fund based on donor designations, applies processing and fundraising fees, accounts for direct payments, and generates the records needed to disburse funds.

Funds and Designations

A Fund in DonorPoint represents a specific area of impact or GL account. Funds are owned by Organizations. When a donor makes a gift and selects a designation, that selection is stored as the fund on the donation order item.

  • Your organization’s own funds represent your internal GL accounts and areas of impact.
  • Agency funds represent allocations to other organizations you distribute to (federated campaigns).
  • Write-in designations are free-text designations with no fund record — they are held by the payout engine pending manual disposition.

Fund Groups

Funds can be collected into Fund Groups for use on donation forms. A Fund Group presents a donor-facing list of designation options. When a donor selects from a Fund Group, the selected fund is stored on their donation order item.

Creating Funds

Funds are created on the Funds tab within an Organization record:

  1. Navigate to the Organization.
  2. Click the Funds tab.
  3. Click Create New Fund.
  4. Enter the fund name and any integration codes needed for your accounting system.
  5. Save.

Custom fields on funds (configured on your Account’s Customization tab) appear on every fund record and in reports automatically.

Payout Batches

A Payout Batch is the primary tool for calculating and disbursing funds to agencies. Each batch is scoped to a specific Giving Campaign and Campaign Year, and uses a Cutoff Date — only transactions received on or before the cutoff date are included.

Payout Batch Lifecycle

  1. CREATED — The batch has been set up but payouts have not yet been calculated.
  2. Preview — Use Export Details or Export Summary to review the calculation before committing.
  3. Build Payouts — Calculates net payable per agency and creates PAYOUT transaction records in PENDING status.
  4. Commit — Activates all PAYOUT transactions (status becomes ACTIVE). The batch status becomes COMMITTED.

Creating a Payout Batch

  1. Go to Payout Batches in the Integration sidebar.
  2. Click Create New Payout Batch.
  3. Select the Giving Campaign and Campaign Year.
  4. Set the Cutoff Date — transactions received after this date are excluded.
  5. Set the Minimum Amount — agencies below this threshold are excluded from the batch.
  6. Check Require Banking Info if agencies must have ACH routing and account numbers on file to receive payouts.
  7. Save (status: CREATED).

How Payouts Are Calculated

For each pledge in scope, the engine:

  1. Finds all active PLEDGE and RECEIVED transactions within the giving campaign, campaign year, and before the cutoff date.
  2. For each pledge, finds all PAYMENT and ADJUSTMENT transactions representing collected funds.
  3. Splits the collected amount across designations proportionally based on each designation’s share of the total pledge.
  4. Calculates fees per designation (processing fee and fundraising fee from your account fee models).
  5. Tracks paidDirect amounts separately — payments made via “Pass Through” payment methods are not held by your organization and are not netted against fees.
  6. Determines held amounts:
    • Write-In — designations with no fund record are held.
    • LOCAL — designations to your own account are held.
  7. Calculates net payable = paid − previouslyPaid − fees (for eligible external agencies).

Payroll pledge handling is treated separately: employer-level payroll pledges are aggregated by organization rather than by individual donor.

Payout Export — Detail CSV

The Export Details button produces a CSV with one row per pledge/designation, containing 24 columns:

Column Description
Pledge Id Transaction ID of the pledge
Pledge Type PLEDGE or RECEIVED
Campaign Giving Campaign name
CampaignType Campaign type (e.g., Empl for payroll)
Payment Method Payment method name
Designation Id Order item ID
Contact Donor name
Organization Employer organization (for payroll)
Designation Fund name or write-in text
Designation Organization Fund’s owning organization
Total Pledge Amount Full pledge amount
Total Payment Amount Total payments received
Total Designation Pledge Amount This designation’s share of the pledge
Total Designation Paid Direct Amount Pass-through (direct) amount for this designation
Total Designation Payment Amount Net amount held for this designation
Processing Account Account that processed the payment
Fundraising Account Federation account (if applicable)
Total Fee processingFee + fundraisingFee
Processing Fee Fee charged by the processing account
Fundraising Fee Fee charged by the federation
Total Payout to Date Amount previously paid out to this agency
Net Payout Due net payable for this designation
Gross Liability (reserved)
Held Amount held (write-in or local)
Held Reason Write-In or LOCAL

Payout Export — Summary CSV

The Export Summary button produces one row per agency with aggregate totals:

  • Organization, Total Designation Pledge Amount, Total Payment Amount, Total Fee, Processing Fee, Fundraising Fee, Total Payout to Date, Net Payout Due, Bank Routing Number, Bank Account Number

The Bank columns are populated from the agency’s ACH Reimbursement Terms on their Organization record (routing number and account number). These are used for ACH file generation.

Banking Requirements

Agencies must have ACH Reimbursement Terms (routing number and account number) configured on their Organization record if Require Banking Info is checked on the batch. Agencies without banking information are excluded from the Build Payouts calculation and do not receive PAYOUT transactions.

Fee Models

Two fee models apply to designations:

  • Processing Fee — charged by your account for processing the payment. Configured on your Account record. Exempt for external (pass-through) payments.
  • Fundraising Fee — charged by the federation to the designated agency. Only applies when your account is the federation for a designation.

Both fees are calculated using the calculateFeeForOrder() function on the configured fee model. Fee models can be fixed amounts, percentage-of-amount, or tiered.

Pass-Through Payments

Payment methods containing “Pass Through” in their name are treated as direct payments — the constituent paid the agency directly, bypassing your organization. These amounts are:

  • Tracked as paidDirect (not paid) in the payout detail
  • Not netted against processing or fundraising fees
  • Not included in your organization’s held amount

Federation Payouts

If your organization acts as a federation (distributing funds to multiple agencies), the Payout Batch handles all federation-specific logic:

  • Fundraising fees are calculated and deducted from agency payouts where your account is the designated federation.
  • Agency-specific amounts are calculated and tracked per designation.
  • The Summary Export includes banking details for ACH disbursement.

Reconciliation

After committing a Payout Batch, use the Reconciliation Records tool to match your DonorPoint payout records against your financial system. Reconciliation records link a fund, an organization, and a transaction, and can have custom fields for tracking reconciliation status and dates.