Angel Funds and Credit Transfers

Table of Contents

What is an Angel Fund?

How does it work?

Using the Angel Fund

Credit Transfers

Accounting for the Angel Fund

What is an Angel Fund?

An Angel Fund is a way to track money that has been earmarked for student accounts but does not belong to a specific student. In practice, an Angel Fund is used as a tool to transfer credits to and from students to help cover their balances. For bookkeeping/budgeting purposes, an Angel Fund is very similar to a student account.

It is most commonly used as a way to support students with financial hardships.

How does it work?

The functionality of an Angel Fund is fairly simple - it is an account that has a balance to which you can add or deduct funds. You can interact with it in four ways:

1. Add funds manually
2. Add funds via transfer from a member
3. Deduct funds manually
4. Deduct funds via transfer to a member

When would I add money to my Angel Fund?

Graduating students

• If a student graduates or leaves your program but still has some credit left over from a fundraiser/overpayment, that credit can be transferred into the Angel Fund if you'd like it to go to another student later.

Donations

• If a member of your community makes a donation to your program and specifies they'd like it to be used to help students with their payments, you can manually add that amount to the Angel Fund.

Scholarships

• If your program sets money aside in the budget to be used for scholarships, you can manually add that amount to the Angel Fund (assuming the scholarship will be used to offset costs in CutTime).

When would I deduct money from my Angel Fund?

Transferring to students with financial hardships

• If you have a student with a financial hardship that you know will have trouble covering their costs, you can use the Angel Fund to apply an "anonymous donation" to their account and reduce their balance.

Transferring to students who earn scholarships

• If your program awards scholarships that can be used on a student's program fees, you can use the Angel Fund to transfer the amount awarded and reduce the student's balance.

Adding money back to general fund

• Since an Angel Fund is essentially money that's earmarked for student accounts, you can manually deduct funds if you'd like to remove that earmark and add that amount back to your program's general fund.

Using the Angel Fund

Viewing the Angel Fund

You can view the balance for your Angel Fund in a box at the top of your Financials dashboard. To access the full details, simply click on the box.

On the Angel Fund page, you will see a transaction history table for your Angel Fund listing all contributions and deductions. Contributions are colored green and have a positive number, while deductions are red and have a negative number.

Manually Adding and Deducting Funds

To manually add funds:

1. Click the "Add funds" button from the top of the page
2. Enter the amount, payment type, and memo for this contribution
3. Click "Create Payment"

To manually deduct funds:

1. Click the "Deduct funds" button from the top of the page
2. Enter the title, amount, due date (using today's date is strongly suggested), and (optionally) a description for this deduction
3. Click "Create"

Please note: While both of these functions mirror the functionality of adding a payment or cost for a student, the manual "costs" and "payments" you add to your Angel Fund will not appear grouped together with the other costs and payments for members in your program. In other words, adding funds to your Angel Fund will not appear in your "All Payments" report since the Angel Fund is not a member.

Transferring Funds to and from Members

To transfer funds from a member to the Angel Fund:

1. Click the "Transfer funds" button from the top of the page
2. In the "Source" dropdown, select the student who will be transferring money into the Angel Fund
3. In the "Destination" dropdown, select the Angel Fund
4. Enter the amount and (optionally) a reason for this transfer
5. Click "Save"

On the student's Program Membership Details page, this transfer will appear as a deduction in their "Transaction summary" with the label "Transfer to —— Season Angel Fund"

To transfer funds from the Angel Fund to a member:

1. Click the "Transfer funds" button from the top of the page
2. In the "Source" dropdown, select the Angel Fund
3. In the "Destination" dropdown, select the student who will be receiving the transfer
4. Enter the amount and (optionally) a reason for this transfer
5. Click "Save"

On the student's Program Membership Details page, this transfer will appear as an addition in their "Transaction summary" with the label "Transfer from —— Season Angel Fund"

Credit Transfers

Accompanying the Angel Fund is functionality to facilitate credit transfers between students. This can be useful if you have a student with a credit balance/overpayment and you want to skip the Angel Fund because you already know which student you want to receive the transfer. This is most commonly used for an older sibling graduating and transferring their leftover credits to a younger sibling.

To transfer credits between members:

1. Navigate to the Program Membership Details page for one of the two students (from Members or Financials)
2. In their "Transaction summary" table, click the "Transfer funds" button
3. In the "Source" dropdown, select the student who will be transferring money to the other student
4. In the "Destination" dropdown, select the student who will be receiving the transfer
5. Enter the amount and (optionally) a reason for this transfer
6. Click "Save"

Accounting for the Angel Fund

When working with student accounts, your program should always have enough money to cover any credits/overpayments that students have at a given time. In other words, if a student has a $10 credit and they decide to use that $10 credit to buy a t-shirt, your program must actually have that $10 in the bank so you can pay the t-shirt company. In your CutTime Financials dashboard, this amount is displayed as "Overpaid Amount" - the Overpaid Amount is the total amount you should have set aside (or "earmarked") to cover all program members with credits/overpayments.

The Angel Fund is very similar in that it also must have money earmarked in the bank to cover the amount (since any amount could be transferred to a student at any time).

In your books, it's your preference whether you categorize the student credits and Angel Fund together or separately - the important thing is that you have money set aside for both. See the screenshot below.