generate notification of upcoming EFT payment

JoAnn Strommen

What I want to do is generate a reminder for donors who have upcoming annual or quarterly payments which we will be taking by charging their credit card or bank debit.  So it's not a bill but just a 'reminder'.



We have entered a capital campaign with multi-year pledges.  I'm not worried about monthly donors but we do want to send some type of reminder to donors who are scheduled for an annual or quarterly payment just to remind them it will be coming out of their account.  For this same fund I have donors who are doing annual/quarterly cash payments so I can't assume all the reminders generated will be EFTs. 



I do not see a way to pull pay method into the export from reminders or am I missing it.  Right now I'm thinking a query might be easier as I don't want these EFT donors pulling into our reminders and not getting manually removed. 



Anyone else send reminders to your EFT annual/quarterly donors?  Or have suggestions for an easy was to pull them? 

Jen Claudy

I've been working on a good system to get RE to remind me when to run EFT, but I hadn't thought about reminding the donor of the upcoming charge.  (Other than emailing last June to let them know that the charges would be 4 days late due to my vacation...and not having any sort of backup staff to do them.)



You should be able to write a Query with the combination of EFT checked AND Send Reminders checked...where those planning to pay by cash would not have the EFT box checked.



This would be a fantastic idea to add to the Idea Bank...particularly if it could be automated by RE/OLX...but I'll settle for the charges being run automatically so I don't have to remember to go initiate that process each month!

JoAnn Strommen

LOL - my reminder is task in Outlook - but we run all EFTs on a set date once a month so not too hard to remember.



Yes, I can get query of the gifts. Just wish there was a more automated, easy way to generate.  Thought about conditional merge in reminders but some of these donors are on monthly EFTs for other pledges so marked for consolidated receipts and conditional merges do not handle records marked for consolidated receipts.  No win.



Put it on RE Discovery site as suggestion:

http://rediscovery.uservoice.com/forums/137015-raiser-s-edge-discovery-topics/suggestions/11249571-provide-mail-option-to-send-pre-payment-notificati

Jen Claudy

Voted and commented!

Jane Owsley

Hello.  I will vote for that idea as well!  We decided to utilize Pre-Notification Actions on the Dashboard to prompt the gift processor (and/or MGO) to personally send a reminder about an upcoming charge (not for monthly, generally for quarterly and annually giving).  Not the best system, but it has allowed us to keep specific individuals on our radar.  It is a managable group for now, but having an automated option via EFT system would be much better.



Thanks for posting!

Jane

JoAnn Strommen

Ugh!  Played with query some more today.  While I can query on Gift First Installment Due I don't see where I'll be able to get "Next Installment Due - not an option in query that I see.  



Frustrating.

Jen Claudy

Not that I like adding data that should already be queryable, but I do use a Gift Attribute to track some of my (regular, not online EFT) pledge payments.  Because I find it very frustrating to try and use the Installment setup in RE.  I just have a Reminder Attribute that has the date of the next installment, then when we receive that payment, I update the date on the Pledge Gift Record for the next installment.  This way, I can use a simple query and always see which next installments are coming up or past due.