Deposit report displays a different transaction percentage than advertised

[[email protected]]

Good afternoon,
A client is passing on transaction fees to the donor. On the back end, in the campaign settings, they have placed the numbers that match what your website displays: 3.75% and .37 per transaction. But when we look at the daily deposit reports from Connect it looks like 3.8% or 3.9% is being taken out. See screenshot. What advice do you have to get the net deposit amount closer to the originally intended donation amount (ie: if someone chooses to donate 100 and pay the fees, the net deposit in the bank is 100)?

[CnP.LiveSupport.AB]

Hi [email protected] ,

When you use the "Additional Fee" feature - your reported numbers come back as being slightly larger than the 3.75% that you expect.

There is no way for us to add an amount to the donation that is 'excused' from the 3.75% fee. We are not actually the bank - we are the company that is providing the software for you to interact with the bank (merchant account), albeit that it is our "partner" bank. The best we can do is provide a feature offers that option to your donors in some way.

So, when someone makes a $100 donation, and your additional fee option is set to match our fee structure: add 0.37 + 3.75%, the bank is assessing the fee on THAT total: $104.12.

You set what that fixed amount and/or percentage in CONNECT's Campaign Details: we aren't suggesting that the feature covers the fees, only that you can use it that way if you choose.

And there is no way to set the Additional Fee so that it exactly covers the cost to match penny for penny.
If you use an algebra equation to determine the difference, you end up adding 3.75% of the 0.37 to your fixed rate (set the fixed amount as 0.38, and the percent stays at 3.75). Even this will be a little off now and then as you cannot set your fixed rate to 0.383875.

So there is a "soft cost" to using the additional fee feature - it makes bookkeeping more difficult. You just have to weigh that against the benefit you get by offering that option to your patrons.