Preference for E-Receipts vs Paper Receipts

Megan Reichmann

Does anyone offer the option to send e-receipts or paper receipts based on donor preference? I'm wondering if we can start doing this, but unsure how to mark that preference for the donor. Is there a way to track this in database view so that I pull a list of paper receipts and a list of e-receipts for the day and they pull in to one list or the other based on the constituent receipt preference?

Dariel Dixon 2

I think it depends on the type of gift.  Generally speaking, if a gift comes in electronically, then an e-receipt is acceptable.  If a gift comes in through the mail, then a paper receipt is probably expected.


I think you can probably use the letter type field on the gift to pull in the types of receipt.  Also, the receipt type in Bio 2 could be used to enter the constituent preference.  

JoAnn Strommen

You may want to read another post https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/158/50207?post_id=195418#p195418 on e-receipt challenges.


I think the letter type field would work as Dariel Dixon‍ posted. I think keeping track of donor preferences could be a challenge. Will preference apply on gift by gift basis or for all their gifts? Will you get consent to e-receipt? I'm not sure how you could pull list for the day as it's not something we're doing at this time.

Megan Reichmann

JoAnn Strommen‍ and Dariel Dixon‍ Thank you! I was hoping to find a way to do it for all their gifts. Gift by gift is still a manual process (in terms of selecting the letter type for each gift), which is what I'm trying to avoid. Basically I'd like to find a way to mark the constituent as a paper receipt constituent or an e-receipt constituent and then use the letter field to determine the language of the letter (we have a few different ones) and then send them either the paper version or the electronic version of their receipt accordingly. I don't know if that's possible though. We currently receipt by day, so I think that part would be fine. 

Dariel Dixon 2

I think that depends on your receipting procedure Megan Reichmann‍.  I don't know if it possible to create a field that will automatically pre-populate this information a create a e-receipt version versus a paper version.  I think the closest thing would be to create conditional merges based of letter type (or some other field) and have possibly a different merge for the electronic versions versus the paper copies.  Either way, that's still looking at each gift individually.  The down side to my suggestion would be that you would have to create an electronic letter type and a paper type for all of your existing letters.


Granted, you could be creating your receipts in a completely different way, however you would still need some field for this logic to work.  Even if you are using an export, those gifts are still being exported individually, so there would still not be a way to globally create those receipts for each constituent.  

Jeanette Patterson

We use a constituent attribute for receipt preferences - paper receipt vs. e-receipt. We use separate RE mail files for paper and e-receipt with the Attribute tab marked accordingly. The only time it wouldn't work is if one constituent want paper receipts for one type of gift and e-receipts for another, but that isn't the case for any of our donors. Obviously, if an email address goes bad, we simply change the constituent attribute for future receipting.


Our paper receipt and e-receipt files are both conditional merges based on letter type and they seem to work just fine.

Keith Wilson 2

Our organization at some point (pre-dates me) renamed the "Target" field on the Bio2 Tab to "Letter Code" and uses that field to record a constituent's receipt preference. In addition to paper vs. e-Receipt, we also will provide the option for an Annual Statement only. When doing gift entry, we will use their receipt preference as a guide for which Letter Code is used on the gift record. Just be sure to include that Target/Letter Code field in the Constituent Preview panel of the Batch Entry screen. There will sometimes be exceptions depending on the type of gift, but in general it works very well.