Pledge Reminders with Installment Details and Pledge Unique ID

Joan Perry

Help with Capital Campaign pledge reminders.

We use an OCR scanline for our Annual Fund, which includes the Constituent ID and Gift ID (or Import ID) for the original pledge. Both IDs help us match payments to right donor and correct pledge. Our Annual reminders are more simple and we use export to get data.

I hoped to pull data with Mail-Reminders and the 5 column data options but there doesn't seem to be any way to ID the pledge.

Right now I can pull data from Mail (to get all the data for the column options calculated for the reminder date) and Export (IDs for constituent-to match and IDs for pledge).

But when the campaign grows, I am not looking forward to merging files. Has anyone dealt with this?

Have you been able to create an export that gives you all the extra installment amount, amount still due, total billed, etc?

Thanks!

Ryan Hyde

I'm not sure I totally understand your process. When a pledge payment comes in, don't you add that via batch? If so, batch should automatically ask you if you want to apply the gift to an existing pledge, and unless you folks add dozens of pledges, it shouldn't be hard to pinpoint the pledge to add it to. At least that's how we do it. It sounds like your system involves an import file though, which is the only reason I can think of to need the pledge import ID. Can you explain a little better?


I can confirm that pledge import ID is not available from the Reminders mail module, and while you can get the total pledge balance from export, I'm not sure you can get the next scheduled pledge payment amount that way (someone else may know better than me on this though).

JoAnn Strommen

I'm also a bit fuzzy on what you are looking for. 


Regarding next scheduled amount - if payment is due in Feb and you use a Run Date of 2/28/18 it will pull that Feb installment in as the amount due (plus include any past due amount). We found using the Reminder Type of Create Custom... gave us the fields we needed to run our bills using reminder.


You may already know that but perhaps it is new info.

Joan Perry

Thanks Ryan and JoAnn for your responses.

Yes we do enter pledge payments by batch but this data is processed by our bank's lockbox before it gets to us.

We had a history of manually adding those payments via batch. We now import using a data file from the bank with ImportOMatic.

As a diocese we have a considerable number of pledges (between 20,000 & 25,000) and pledge payments for our annual campaign.

We are now adding the Capital Campaign.

So with our volume the import has considerably increased our productivity/efficiency.

But to make it work best, we need some type of unique ID for the pledge so that we link the payment to the correct pledge - we have donors with multiple pledges.


I can use Export to pull Constituent and Gift IDs (import or other) and I know I can get a Total Pledge Amount, Total Paid and Total Balance. But I am trying to figure out how to pull what is currently due -- as JoAnn mentioned, the Reminder function uses the Run Date to calculate that information -- this seems more challenging in Export.


My current work around is to use the Reminder function to pull all the installment and related fields and create an output query. I then use that query in Export to pull the Constituent ID and Gift ID. Since my Reminder data includes Constituent ID, I can use those common fields to sync the data files and add in the Gift ID.

My concern is as the file gets larger, the more you have to touch the data, the more chance for error.


So...my reach out to the community beehive for some thoughts/feedback.


I also added this request to the idea bank (RE7-I-4770) if anyone else thinks having some type of unique gift ID as a field option in reminders is a good one.


 

Ryan Hyde

Got it. Yeah, I can see why this would be super important to you. You've already come up with the only workaround I can think of. You're using VLOOKUP, right? 


Do donors only have one such pledge for the capital campaign per record? If so, I don't think you should have too much to worry about. VLOOKUP is pretty fool proof so long as there's a perfecton 1-to-1 matchup. 


But yes, I agree with you that the pledge import ID should be available as a field from within the mail reminder module. I found your suggestioned and voted on it

JoAnn Strommen

I also voted for it. I can see where with a large org it would be very beneficial. As a small one we have some records with 3-5 pledges and it takes time to make sure correct one is selected.

Jen Claudy

Not sure if this will help you or not, but at my last org, I needed to be able to extract pledge & payment data to use in a custom process outside of RE.  I needed to be able to link up the Pledge Gift with it's Payment Gifts.  So I repurposed (changed the label in Config > Fields) either the [Mailing ID] or [Finder Number] fields on the Gift's [Miscellaneous] Tab to be [Pledge ID].  When entering the Pledge, I would save the record, then copy the [Gift ID] and paste it into that repurposed field.  Then, when entering payments, RE will automatically copy forward that field, so the payment has it's own unique [Gift ID] but the same [Pledge ID] as the Pledge.

Cindi Stewart

Joan Perry:

Thanks Ryan and JoAnn for your responses.

Yes we do enter pledge payments by batch but this data is processed by our bank's lockbox before it gets to us.

We had a history of manually adding those payments via batch. We now import using a data file from the bank with ImportOMatic.

As a diocese we have a considerable number of pledges (between 20,000 & 25,000) and pledge payments for our annual campaign.

We are now adding the Capital Campaign.

So with our volume the import has considerably increased our productivity/efficiency.

But to make it work best, we need some type of unique ID for the pledge so that we link the payment to the correct pledge - we have donors with multiple pledges.


I can use Export to pull Constituent and Gift IDs (import or other) and I know I can get a Total Pledge Amount, Total Paid and Total Balance. But I am trying to figure out how to pull what is currently due -- as JoAnn mentioned, the Reminder function uses the Run Date to calculate that information -- this seems more challenging in Export.


My current work around is to use the Reminder function to pull all the installment and related fields and create an output query. I then use that query in Export to pull the Constituent ID and Gift ID. Since my Reminder data includes Constituent ID, I can use those common fields to sync the data files and add in the Gift ID.

My concern is as the file gets larger, the more you have to touch the data, the more chance for error.


So...my reach out to the community beehive for some thoughts/feedback.


I also added this request to the idea bank (RE7-I-4770) if anyone else thinks having some type of unique gift ID as a field option in reminders is a good one.


Joan,


I also work for an Archdiocese that is extremely large with numerous campaigns going on at any one time.  We currently use imports from our bank lockboxs for pledges and payments.  We have an import ID but we also include the campaign and fund ID's in the import created at the bank.  As a result, the import will attach to the correct campaign and payments attached to the correct pledge since there is generally only one pledge for the campaign included on the file.  Since it sounds like our circumstances are similar, I am happy to talk further with you about this issue.


Cindi Stewart