Reconciling Facebook bank payments with GivePanel

Facebook has had some issues with the data they are sending charities in the transaction report / Reporting API.

Although we can’t change this at GivePanel, we do try our best to help you solve these problems. This glitch means that some donations are being converted randomly to different currencies, such as US dollars. The result is that some donations present themselves as dollars in the transaction data. This is causing lots of issues with reconciliation for the charities that we are working with. We update Meta regularly on the impact this will be having.

For example, the Facebook data that has been uploaded into your GivePanel account could look like this;

£58,107.77

$21,108.92.

This will make it very hard for you to reconcile the amount received in your bank account and the amounts that appear in GivePanel. The amount in your bank account will be a combination of donations in pounds (GBP) and dollars (USD), but all converted into your usual currency.

To achieve this single payment, Facebook will have automatically converted the donations that have appeared in dollars at the exchange rate at that time. The exchange rate value isn’t a number they share in their reports.

The first step is to identify which donations have been affected. To do this create a donations report in report builder and include the ''donation currency' field to the report.  You will then be able to see which donations are in USD and which are in GBP.



You will then be able to isolate which donations have the currencies that are unusual to your normal currency. 

The next step will depend on your internal finance processes. You will be able to show the Finance team which donations have been converted and then make a calculation using the exchange rate for that day, based on the differing amounts between your bank account and the GivePanel amount.

Facebook have shared the exchange rate they used for the dates this issue was impacting the transaction data.

Note from Meta: this is the closest approximation of currency conversion they were able to share.

Download Table Below:
GBP / Dollars
Euros / Dollars