If your foundation has ever needed to change a fee formula and the first call you made was to your software vendor, you already understand the problem.
Fund fee management is one of those operational realities that sits quietly in the background until it does not. A new fund type requires a different fee structure. A board decision changes how fees are calculated across endowment funds. A tiered formula that worked two years ago no longer reflects how your foundation operates. And every time something needs to change, the process is slower and more complicated than it should be.
For most foundations using legacy systems, that friction is just accepted as normal. It should not be.
What the Legacy Approach Looks Like
Legacy fee management was designed around constraints, not flexibility. One formula had to account for as many scenarios as possible, which meant it was complex by design. Only one formula could run at a time. Fund group support was limited. There was no run history, so if a calculation produced unexpected results, tracing back the logic was a manual exercise.
Most importantly: foundations could not modify their own formulas, which meant finance staff working around a system instead of working with it.
The result is a fee process that is opaque, difficult to audit, and entirely dependent on outside help for changes that should be routine.
What Modern Fund Fee Management Looks Like
A well-designed fee management system does a few things foundations rarely get to experience.
It lets you build and maintain formulas yourself. No support ticket. No waiting. If your fee structure changes, you change the formula.
It supports one formula per calculation type, so you are not cramming multiple scenarios into a single complex rule. A monthly percentage fee for endowment funds is its own formula. A quarterly tiered fee for agency funds is its own formula. They run independently, on their own schedule, without interfering with each other.
It gives you a run history. Every calculation is logged so you can see exactly how a result was determined and adjust if needed before anything posts.
And it is auditable. When questions come up at board review or during an audit, you can point to a clear calculation log rather than trying to reconstruct logic from memory.
The Fund Fee Formula Builder in akoyaGO
This is exactly what the Fund Fee Formula Builder in akoyaGO delivers.
Finance staff build formulas directly in the system. You name the formula, set the frequency (monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually), choose the calculation type (fixed or tiered), and define whether the fee is a flat dollar amount or a percentage of the balance. For tiered formulas, you set the balance bands and the rate for each tier. The form is dynamic, so it only shows the fields that apply to your choices. A flat-dollar formula does not display balance or tier settings at all.
Once a formula is active, you assign it to funds directly from a fund view. Select the funds, click Assign Fund Fee, and choose your formula. It is three steps. You can assign the same formula to one fund or to an entire segment of your portfolio at once.
When it is time to run fees, you queue the calculation in Business Central, review the batch, check the log, and post. Multiple formulas can run at the same time. If something looks off before posting, you can adjust individual fee amounts in the batch before anything goes to the general journal.
Foundations moving from the legacy system can migrate at their own pace. Review your existing formulas, rebuild them in the new builder, test against your old results, and deactivate the legacy version when you are confident everything matches.
The Difference This Makes
The shift from legacy fee management to the Fund Fee Formula Builder is not just a workflow improvement. It is a change in who controls the process.
Finance staff who previously had to wait on a support request to update a formula can now make that change themselves. Operations staff who had no visibility into how fees were calculated now have a log they can review and explain. Leadership asking questions in a board meeting can get answers rooted in a clear, auditable record.
Fund fee management does not have to be a black box. For foundations ready to take control of the process, the tools are there.
Interested in seeing the Fund Fee Formula Builder in action? Chat with a member of our team!
Ameliea Dulaney brings more than seven years of marketing experience rooted entirely in the philanthropic sector. Her career began at a small nonprofit in her hometown, where a lifelong passion for mission-driven work and a natural gift for storytelling found their professional home. Over the years she built her expertise across multiple nonprofit organizations before transitioning into the foundation world, where she led marketing for a community foundation. That experience gave her a deep, firsthand understanding of how foundations operate, what they need, and how to communicate their impact. She joined akoyaGO to bring that perspective to the technology side of philanthropy, helping foundations do good better.
