One of my donors overcontributed to the PAC! What do I do?

Keeping your large donors from contributing more than the $5,000 maximum can be a challenge because contributors want to max out at exactly $5,000. If they contribute by credit card, it’s not a problem. If, however, they contribute by recurring payroll deductions, the bi-weekly or monthly split never works out to exactly $5,000 for the year. They will either be $0.08 under $5k or $0.06 over the limit.

 

PASS Receipt Analysts and Compliance Managers are monitoring your large donors to ensure they stay within the limits.

 

Toward the end of the year, they will suggest you ask the payroll department to manually adjust the deduction amount for the last pay date. The downside of this approach is that someone has to remember to ask Payroll to restore the deduction back to the original amount after January 1.

 

The PASS Receipts team is also paying attention to any payroll dates that may fall on January 1, which typically means they get pushed back to December 31 because of the holiday. This can cause an overage because the individual would have received 27 pay checks in one year. Don’t worry. PASS’ Receipts team can alert you to this at the start of the year as we track actual pay period dates for our clients.

 

Many payroll systems can place a $5000 cap on PAC contributions. Systems with this capability will not only adjust the contribution on that last pay date as needed, they will also resume taking the original amount on the first pay date of the new year. Does your payroll system have this functionality? Talk to your Payroll department to find out.

 

To add to your peace of mind, PASS’ epacInfo software has reports that show Year to Date contributions for all contributors as well as reports that will show a payroll variance from one pay period to the next. Keeping a close eye on donation changes is important to monitoring your PAC income and making sure deductions are not inadvertently stopped after the start of a new year or other change.

 

Tracking PAC receipts is an important step in maintaining donor compliance and monitoring the health of your PAC. PASS can help! Contact your Compliance Manager to get more information on  the PASS process for keeping your contributions compliant. And, if you would like to know more about epacInfo reports that allow you to track your receipt information, please reach out to your Compliance Manager and learn reporting options to get the data you need with just a couple of clicks. PASS will keep your PAC on track!