TYPE in a constituents records

Jayne Plotkin

How do I change the TYPE from Recurring Gift to Recurring Pay Cash?

Karen Stuhlfeier

You set up a recurring gift and then payments to that gift are applied to it and they have the gift type of recurring gift - pay cash. Kind of a lot to explain in a few sentences. Do you know how recurring gifts work? 

Jayne Plotkin

Karen Stuhlfeier:

You set up a recurring gift and then payments to that gift are applied to it and they have the gift type of recurring gift - pay cash. Kind of a lot to explain in a few sentences. Do you know how recurring gifts work? 

Thank you!

Joy park

This information is less relevant if you do not have Blackbaud Merchant Services to automatically generate your recurring gifts, but you can still work with it to create default batches from a flow-through company such as CanadaHelps, United Way, Benevity, Truist, etc., especially if you know when those gifts typically land in your bank account.  :)

Recurring Gift is a TEMPLATE file, just like Pledge and you have to set it up before processing the gift.  It usually has a schedule associated with it - "the donor is giving $10 each month on the 15th for the next 12 calendar months", for example.

Recurring Gift-PayCash is the actual gift, loaded from the template file.  


Sometimes when you are in Batch, RE will prompt "Do you want to apply this gift to a Recurring Gift?"  However, if it does not, there is a way to link them!  


Go into the Gift, select the "Gift" menu, then "Apply to" and one of the options should be Recurring Gift.  

Melissa S Graves

You can't change a gift type. The question is do you know the difference and why do you need to change it?


If you already had a recurring gift setup and when the payment came in it was entered as another recurring gift instead of a cash gift linked to the recurring gift - then you need to re-enter the payment. What you do with the original error depends on your internal controls. you may be able to delete it or you may be required to adjust it down to zero to track the change.

Jayne Plotkin

Thank you!

Jill Freidmutter

Jayne Plotkin:

How do I change the TYPE from Recurring Gift to Recurring Pay Cash?

We had our first recurring gifts this year. Blackbaud support was great at helping me set up the recurring gift and charge the first one. Then when it was time to charge the gift the next month, they helped me do it right. I called support and we did a screen share and they walked me through it. The third month I tried to do it on my own. It didn't look right so I called again and they helped me fix it. I now have the knowledge to do it right. Sometimes BB support is the right approach. 

Jayne Plotkin

Thanks much!

Faith Murray

LOVE recurring gifts. We had a handful of donors with "continuous lifetime pledges" that we had to go into our system each year and create a new annual pledge for them when our new appeal cycle began. Then, as eventually happens, after some years the donor would die or be unable to continue his pledge, and we would have a write-off. I like recurring gifts, even for non-BBMS gifts because it eliminates the need for write-offs, and you can easily change the Appeal designation each year without having to create a whole new gift.


But yes, to answer your question, if a gift has accidentally been entered as a Recurring Gift instead of a Recurring Gift payment, you will have to delete it, or adjust it down to zero, or better yet just Terminate it, and then re-enter a new gift as a payment. I never make the Recurring Gifts posted (always mark them Do Not Post), since they are not a real cash gift, just a template, so there is no complication with Finance if one later needs deleted or edited. Only payments get Posted. To Terminate the recurring gift, open the gift record and look for the button on the right-hand side that says "Active" - click it and select Terminated" instead. Since a recurring gift is only a template, this makes the Template inactive.