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Featured Posts
Mark Walker
SuccessFund Team
Cash and card readers at the concession stand: how do you run the line?
Concession stands are where the mobile app gets its hardest test: a long line, volunteers who have never used it, cash and cards mixed together, and a reader that has to last the whole game. I want to collect what works, from people who have done it. A few things that come up in almost every conversation: * The app takes card, tap, cash and Venmo. Cash sales go in as offline transactions, the app makes change for you and records who took the cash, so the drawer reconciles afterward. * A full charge lasts six or more hours. Charge readers the night before and update the app before the event; older app versions have a harder time connecting. * Volunteers sign in with a Volunteer Code from the campaign's Collaborators tab, so nobody shares a login. * Readers are $79 and take about a week to arrive, so order before the season, not before the game. What I would like to hear from you: * How many lines do you run, and do you split cash and card? * Who counts the drawer, and how do you record the cash total afterward? * What do you do when a reader dies mid-game? * Did card acceptance change what people bought? Two open feature requests touch this: Cash Management [https://www.successfund.com/community/feature-requests/6aa41b8ddaca29b34614ed8f] and Offline Transactions [https://www.successfund.com/community/feature-requests/6a9198446f938c5222d3dcfa]. If either would change your game night, vote there and tell us here what you do today.
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Mark Walker
SuccessFund Team
School stores: how do you handle department purchases, POs, and pickup?
School stores are one of the most common campaigns on the platform, and three separate feature requests on this board are really about the same set of problems: a teacher or department buying on a purchase order, running more than one storefront, and tracking what an item costs versus what it sells for. Before we build anything I want to hear how you run yours today. Tools people use now: * Product availability: Online and In-Person, Online Only, In-Person Only, or Unlisted (hidden, reachable by direct link). Unlisted plus an access code is how some stores sell to staff without showing those items to students. * A variable-price product for custom amounts rung up in person. * Delivery Instructions on each product, which shows on the receipt, for "pick up in room 114 on Fridays." * Product questions for names, sizes and homerooms; checkout questions for order-wide details. * The Product Sales report for inventory and best sellers. What I would like to hear: * When a department or club buys from the store, how do you take it? A PO, an offline transaction, a separate campaign? * Do you run one store per school or several, and why? * How do you handle pickup and fulfillment on a busy day? The open requests: Pay by Purchase Order [https://www.successfund.com/community/feature-requests/6a4efd7f55e25409a5b39f47], Separate store fronts for one campaign [https://www.successfund.com/community/feature-requests/6a0771599b16deab1810c967], and Product cost [https://www.successfund.com/community/feature-requests/6a688d60c6afe0b7c0121a83]. Vote on the ones that would help you, and tell us here how you work around them now.
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Mark Walker
SuccessFund Team
Payout reconciliation: how does your business office match SuccessFund deposits to the bank?
The sales tax thread on this board turned into the best finance conversation we have had, so I want to start the next one. Reconciling deposits is where most of the "why doesn't this match" questions come from, and I think districts have solved it in different ways. The facts that trip people up most often: * Payouts run weekly. The cutoff is Monday around 1pm Mountain, and most deposits land Friday morning. A campaign that collects over several weeks gets one deposit per week, so a $1,200 campaign can show up as $569 one week and $634 the next. * Every deposit is listed under the campaign's Results, then Payouts, with refunds as negative lines and sales tax as its own line. * The district Reports page has the Standard and QCC payout reports. They describe the same deposits but lay them out differently, so rows will not match one to one. * Payout Recording lets you mark each payout Recorded or Not Recorded so you can see what still needs to be entered. * The Campaign Activity Report is one CSV with every campaign, its allocation ID, and its digital, offline, refund and paid-out totals. What I would love to know: * Which report do you actually use each week, and what do you do to it before it goes into your accounting system? * Do you reconcile by campaign, by school, or by bank account? * What is still a manual step for you? If sales tax is part of your reconciliation, the sales tax thread [https://www.successfund.com/community/feature-requests/6a1857f0a2f65631bb265217] is still the place for that piece.
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Jesse Myrick
SuccessFund Team
District approvers: how is your approval chain set up, and what do you ask organizers?
Every district on SuccessFund reviews campaigns before they go live, but no two districts route them the same way. I read a lot of approval setups, and the ones that run smoothly share a few habits. I would like to hear how yours works and what you would change. The pieces you control under Approvals, then Settings: * A first approver per school, plus an org-wide fallback reviewer for schools with nobody assigned. * Approve and Forward versus Final Approval, decided by role permission. A "review only" role can forward but never finalize. * Instructions for Approvers, shown to a reviewer right before they act. This is where the routing rules live ("athletics goes to the AD, everything else to the business office"). * Your own approval questions and closeout questions, and a campaign disclaimer that prints on every campaign page and flyer. * For booster clubs and PTAs, sanctioning: an annual application your district reviews, with a set term or a fixed renewal date. What I would like to learn from you: * Who is your first approver, the principal or the bookkeeper? Does it change by school? * Which approval questions have earned their place, and which ones do organizers skip or answer badly? * How do you handle a booster club that runs a campaign under a school's name? An earlier thread asked how districts track their booster clubs and PTOs [https://www.successfund.com/community/forum/69dec6260311c6eea4cbb954]. If that is your world, both threads could use you.
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Jesse Myrick
SuccessFund Team
Fees and fines in one campaign: how do you code each item for your business office?
A lot of districts collect several fees on one campaign: lunch balances, laptop fees, lost book fines, parking. That works well at checkout, but the reconciliation side raises the same questions every year, so I want to compare notes. What the platform gives you today: * Each fee set up as its own product shows as its own row on the Product Sales report, so one campaign can still be split by what the money was for. * A checkout question puts the student name on each order (one student per order). A product question does it per line item when a parent pays for two or three kids at once. Set this up before the first payment; answers cannot be backfilled onto orders already taken. * The campaign's allocation ID rides on every deposit report. The QCC report groups each deposit by campaign; the Standard report lists every transaction. Where I know it gets harder is when your business office wants a different account code per fee type inside the same campaign. Some districts run one campaign per fee to get around that. Others export the Product Sales report and code it by hand. Questions for the finance folks: * Do you run one campaign with many fee products, or one campaign per fee? Why? * How do you get each item to the right account code today? * What would the export need to look like to drop straight into your system? Related request on the board: School Payments, Fees, and Fines Update [https://www.successfund.com/community/feature-requests/6a54ff6ddd1cce8c07a6319e]. Your answers here will shape what we do with it.
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Jesse Myrick
SuccessFund Team
Fun runs and read-a-thons: how do you get families to enroll and share?
The pledge campaigns that do well on SuccessFund all have one thing in common: the kids and their families actually share their personal link. The ones that stall usually sent one email from the school and waited. What we see working across districts: * Enroll everyone in one sitting. The enrollment link on the Leaderboard tab works before the campaign is live, even while it is still pending approval. A practice, an assembly, or a class period with the roster in the room beats emailing the link home. * Get pledges in before event day. Kids who can already see money pledged against them push harder. Day-of pledges are a bonus, not the plan. * Turn on "Require Selection at Checkout" (Leaderboard tab, gear icon) so every donation lands on a participant instead of unattributed. Campaigns with a leaderboard raise about two and a half times more on average, but the setup is only half of it. So I would love to hear from people who have run one: * How did you get families to enroll? Paper flyer with a QR code, a text from the teacher, a sign-up table? * What did the kids actually send to grandparents and neighbors? * Which tracking mode did you use (leaderboard, name and team, name and teacher) and would you pick it again? There is also an open request to group leaderboard participants in the results CSV [https://www.successfund.com/community/feature-requests/6ab42283079fb0411f598098]. If grouping by class or team would change how you run the event, say so there too.
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