Gift Detail and Summary Reports taking days to run

Neal Wyborn

 

 We're having problems with running certain Gift Detail and Summary Reports. We know what the problem is and are wondering if there is anyone who has had similar situations and what steps they took to resolve it. We're told by Blackbaud that the problem lies with how we enter our pledges, splitting the gifts when necessary. We don't have any problems with output variances or anything, it's simply the amount of time it takes to run the report (monthly pledge balance reports for specific campaigns) . We allow donor designated donations through workplace campaigns, so some of the larger workplaces can have upwards of 40-50 different funds or more for their pledges. We find being able to split the gifts agreeable to our input process and would like to continue if at all possible.

A resolution we're thinking of but are not sure if it will work, or if it's worth the extra time.

• 
  
  Creating a separate pledge for each designated fund. (would like to avoid this if possible as it would add a lot of work to our process.
  
  

If this is the route we need to take, what would be the maximum amount of splits we could use before the report bogs down again? Again we're not even sure that this would even work, so we're wondering if anyone else has come across this problem and has worked around it or fixed it.

Some more info of the problem is as follows:

• 
  
  Certain orgs that have many splits are where the reports hang on. If I remove the specific orgs from the report, they run quicker, but we'd like to avoid this as it has proven time consuming to manually report on the individual orgs.
  
  
• 
  
  Reports can run several days, even up to a week or two.
  
  

What we would like to look into is the most time effective method to bypass this problem of the reports taking too long to run.  Apologies for the length.

Regards,

Neal Wyborn

Campaign Data Administrator

United Way of St. Catharines and District

Ontario, Canada

Neal Wyborn

Neal Wyborn:

 

 We're having problems with running certain Gift Detail and Summary Reports. We know what the problem is and are wondering if there is anyone who has had similar situations and what steps they took to resolve it. We're told by Blackbaud that the problem lies with how we enter our pledges, splitting the gifts when necessary. We don't have any problems with output variances or anything, it's simply the amount of time it takes to run the report (monthly pledge balance reports for specific campaigns) . We allow donor designated donations through workplace campaigns, so some of the larger workplaces can have upwards of 40-50 different funds or more for their pledges. We find being able to split the gifts agreeable to our input process and would like to continue if at all possible.

A resolution we're thinking of but are not sure if it will work, or if it's worth the extra time.

• 
  
  Creating a separate pledge for each designated fund. (would like to avoid this if possible as it would add a lot of work to our process.
  
  

If this is the route we need to take, what would be the maximum amount of splits we could use before the report bogs down again? Again we're not even sure that this would even work, so we're wondering if anyone else has come across this problem and has worked around it or fixed it.

Some more info of the problem is as follows:

• 
  
  Certain orgs that have many splits are where the reports hang on. If I remove the specific orgs from the report, they run quicker, but we'd like to avoid this as it has proven time consuming to manually report on the individual orgs.
  
  
• 
  
  Reports can run several days, even up to a week or two.
  
  

What we would like to look into is the most time effective method to bypass this problem of the reports taking too long to run.  Apologies for the length.

Regards,

Neal Wyborn

Campaign Data Administrator

United Way of St. Catharines and District

Ontario, Canada

 One more addition I forgot. The problem has nothing to do with network or computer performance, it's strictly programming and trying to work around it.

Thanks

James Andrews

Neal Wyborn:

 One more addition I forgot. The problem has nothing to do with network or computer performance, it's strictly programming and trying to work around it.

Thanks

This is really interesting to me, and I hope someone has an answer for you. We don't split gifts, but I've looked into how RE stores the gift data in the GIFT and GiftSplit tables (and GiftPreviousSplit for adjusted gifts), and it seems to me the only way you'd be able to get around this is to write your own gift detail report directly off the back end of the database that processes the SQL needed more efficiently than whatever is happening in the gift detail report. I wouldn't know how to do that, but some might.