Entity Crossovers

Using entity crossovers, you can manage multiple financial entities within your single instance of Nimble AMS. When you set up entity crossovers, products from multiple entities can be processed in a single order, and when a payment is applied to the order, any necessary inter-entity transactions are automatically generated based on the entity crossover. The entity crossover specifies the due-to and due-from general ledger (GL) accounts for the entities.

When to Use Entity Crossovers

Associations often manage more than one financial entity. An association might have a related educational foundation, one or more political action committees (PAC) or other related organizations. These related organizations are typically distinct and separate financial entities for tax and legal reasons, with each required to maintain its own general ledger.

The constituents of the association may, however, expect to interact with the association and its related organizations as if it were a single entity. Constituents may expect to place a single order that combines products from any of the related entities. For example, an order might include a membership (association product) and a donation (foundation product). The constituent makes a single payment against the order, but the income belongs to different entities.

The association staff may also want to share the information about their full constituency, regardless of which entities the constituents interact with, in a single system like Nimble AMS. For orders with products from more than one entity, the staff may not want to manually track the inter-entity transactions that arise. In Nimble AMS, entity crossovers automatically generate the inter-entity transactions, saving staff considerable time.

Most associations with multiple entities will want to use entity crossovers unless the association has no inter-entity transactions.

Creating Entity Crossovers

By default, Nimble AMS allows only products from one entity to be processed in a single order. When adding order items, only the products for the selected entity are displayed.

For associations that have multiple entities, an administrator can create one or more entity crossovers that define the due-to and due-from GL accounts between the entities. The entity crossover defines one entity as the primary entity, which receives the payment for a product it does not own, and a different entity as the secondary entity, which does not receive the payment for its product.

Once you create entity crossovers, a single order can contain any product owned by the primary entity and any product owned by the secondary entities of the entity crossovers.

Glossary

The following terms are helpful in understanding entity crossovers in Nimble AMS.

Term	Definition
Due-To GL Account	GL account of the primary entity that represents the amount of money owed to the secondary entity. It is a liability for the primary entity.
Due-From GL Account	GL account of the secondary entity that represents the amount of money to be received from the primary entity. It is an asset for the secondary entity.
Entity Crossover	A record in Nimble AMS that sets the due-to and due-from GL accounts between two related entities. The existence of one or more of these records "turns on" entity crossovers in Nimble AMS.
Inter-Entity Transactions	A set of balancing transactions in a multiple-entity order that has a payment.
Primary Entity	The entity that receives a payment for a product that it does not own. It is the due-from entity or the entity that has collected a payment on behalf of another entity. The payment is due to the secondary entity.
Primary Batch	The batch that used to create the order and determines the order's primary entity.
Secondary Batch	The batch that records the revenue transaction for products owned by the order's secondary entity. It is created automatically. There is one secondary batch for each secondary entity included on the order.
Secondary Entity	The entity that does not receive payment for a product that it owns. It is the due-to entity or the entity that is owed a payment. The payment is due from the primary entity. An order can have more than one secondary entity.

How Entity Crossovers Work in Staff View

In Staff View, the primary entity is selected when first creating the order. You may select an automatic or a manual batch and your batch's entity sets the primary entity for the order. The secondary entity's batch will always be an automatic batch. It will contain the credit entry for the revenue of the secondary entity's product.

If no payment is received on the order, the debit entry will be to the order item's accounts receivable account. If a payment is received, the debit entry will be the due-from side of inter-entity transaction and will use the GL account that is in the Due-to GL Account. On multi-entity orders, the entity that can be used for payments is the entity that has been set as the primary entity on an entity crossover. More than one entity can be available for selection as the payment entity if more than one entity is set as the primary entity on an entity crossover.

By using the Cross Entity Coupon feature, it is also possible to use coupons in inter entity transactions in Staff View and Community Hub, given that entity crossover is configured.

Pilot Feature

Please note Cross Entity Coupon feature is in Pilot. For more information on enabling the feature please reach out to our Customer Success Team through a support case.

How Entity Crossovers Work in Community Hub

To allow the products of a secondary entity to be purchasable in Community Hub, select Self Service Enabled on the entity crossover.

In Community Hub, the payment entity is the main entity for the site, and it applies to all orders from that Community Hub site.

Viewing Inter-Entity Transactions

Staff can view the inter-entity transactions on the order and can also view the inter-entity transactions on the batch. The due-to transaction is tied to the primary batch, and the due-from transaction is tied to the secondary batch.

Things to Keep in Mind

Administrators should consider the following before setting up an entity crossover.

When you enable products from a secondary entity to be available in Community Hub, be sure to create entity crossovers for the secondary entity. Nimble AMS does not warn you if you do not create the entity crossovers. However, when constituents attempt to purchase a product from the secondary entity, they will receive error messages and cannot complete the purchase.
At this time, selecting Self Service Enabled on the entity crossover has no impact on Community Hub. A product of the secondary entity displays and the inter-entity transactions are generated whether or not Self Service Enabled is selected on the entity crossover. Use Self Service Enabled on the product to manage which products display in Community Hub. We recommend selecting Self Service Enabled on the entity crossovers you create in preparation of the future enhancement of this field.
Nimble AMS does not transfer the actual money owed between entities. Nimble AMS generates the necessary inter-entity transactions to balance the debits and credits for an order involving multiple entities. If staff is using the GL Export, the inter-entity transactions are included with the exports, eliminating the need to manually generate them. Staff can also report on the inter-entity transactions to determine the amount that should transfer from the primary entity to the secondary entity.
For credit card payments made on orders using entity crossovers, the payment is processed through the primary entity's configured payment gateway. The use of multiple payment gateways on a single order is not supported.
To preserve a complete financial audit trail, Nimble AMS does not allow the deletion of entity crossovers or transactions.