Importing Paypal Credit Card Gifts with No Credit Card Number

Jessica Wilson 3

Hi, our organization is completely new to Etapestry and we are wanting to import our constituents giving history via our PayPal donations received. However, when we go to add the gift on the constituent's journal, it requires a credit card number and expiration date for us to indicate that the past gift received was a credit card payment (received via paypal). We do not have the credit card number, we just have the amount/date/and constituent that donated.


Our question is: is there a way to show that the gifts were received via credit card, without the required credit card number field? Or, do we need to label it as a "cash" gift and put paypal in the notes? Just want to make sure we are tracking our gifts received properly. Thank you!

Jeffrey Haguewood

Hi Jessica - There is merit in both of the options you outlined.  Marking the gift type as cash is viable.  That is the easiest option and keeps imports simple.  Instead of adding PayPal to the notes, you might put it in a UDF for payment type or source.  A UDF will provide for cleaner reporting.  The other way I've done this is to import dummy data into the credit card fields so you can flag the transaction as gift type of credit card.  For example, you can place XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX or 9999888877776666 in the credit card number and 01/18 in the expiration date in all rows of your import file.  It is unlikely that you will be reporting on the credit card number and expiration date, so this should work.  Also, if you're importing gifts, do make sure to import the constituent accounts for those gifts first, and then import the gifts.  If you import gifts first without the constituent accounts, you may end up with many duplicates in your database (a mess you will want to avoid).  Welcome to eTapestry!