1. Use "Cash Drawers" to Make Finding Lost Money/Transactions Quick

• Cash drawers are a way of tracking revenue (not just cash, but credit/debit and checks as well) and refunds by location.  For example, if you have three adoption desks, each can be given its own "cash drawer".  This becomes extremely helpful when you end of day money count is off by $20.00 and you know exactly which desk was responsible for the discrepancy.

2. Use "Fund" (your accountant will likely call these "GL Codes") to Categorize Your Revenue by Type

• You may have 20 different price levels for all the animals you adopt, but if you want to roll that all up into something like "adoption fee revenue" you should configure a Fund / GL Code for that.  Similarly, you may take donations of various types, but all can be rolled up into a "donation fee" fund.  This makes categorizing revenue much faster.

3. Use "Department" to Categorize Your Revenue by Activities or Programs You Run

• You may capture donations when an adoption happens. You may also capture donations when you take an owner surrender or when you offer a low-cost spay neuter.  If you want to track the donation back to the program or activity that brought in the revenue, you can track that by department.

After configuring these you'll need to remember to assign your new Funds / GL Codes and Departments to each of your configured Adoption Price Groups, Adoption Hold Price Groups, Non-Adoption Items, and Donation types (recurring donations and donations made through the Donation Boost Widget) so that these new values are reflected in your reporting. 

See the Best Practices for configuring Cash Drawers, Funds / GL Codes, and Departments article for some great templates and examples!