Deleting gifts

Brenda Travis

Can anyone offer any insight into how I go about deleting a gift in a constituent's record? I'm new to NXT, and cannot figure it out for the life of me! What am I missing?

Dawn Cox

Hi Brenda, you are not alone, you can't actually delete gifts in NXT or in Database View if it was put on via NXT, which is absurd I know! See this forum.

Brenda Travis

Thank you, Dawn. I thought how many different ways can you search “delete a gift” that would make it show up! Another odd thing about NXT is you can't apply pledge payments. You have to go into the database view as well.

Dawn Cox

Its certainly not helpful is it, there are a few odd things about NXT unfortunately, and seems the only thing to do is compain or/and add your ideas….

Dariel Dixon 2

Dawn Cox:

Hi Brenda, you are not alone, you can't actually delete gifts in NXT or in Database View if it was put on via NXT, which is absurd I know! See this forum.

I had no idea this is a thing. I don't enter gifts in NXT, so I had never come across this issue, but I'm glad to know about it.

Karen Diener 2

I don't know why you need to delete the gift, but just a couple of thoughts:

Many people find it important to retain the gift and adjust the amount of it to $0. This can be helpful to retain some history that the gift was on someone's record and why it is no longer present.

If the gift was entered on the incorrect record, you can move a gift from one record to another in webview.

There are definitely times when I've deleted gifts, but just think ahead to potential future problems to make that deleting the gift is the correct step.

Karen

Alex Wong

Karen Diener:

I don't know why you need to delete the gift, but just a couple of thoughts:

Many people find it important to retain the gift and adjust the amount of it to $0. This can be helpful to retain some history that the gift was on someone's record and why it is no longer present.

If the gift was entered on the incorrect record, you can move a gift from one record to another in webview.

There are definitely times when I've deleted gifts, but just think ahead to potential future problems to make that deleting the gift is the correct step.

Karen

While I agree with you about keeping trail, as you already mention, there are legitimate time when gift needs to be deleted.

If this is a “TRUE” feature of RE NXT to not allow delete, then Blackbaud should have not allow the Security permission for that function. HOwever, I think it is more of a bug then a feature. You are still able to delete gift if the gift was created in Database view, and given that the majority of gift will be entered in database view's gift batch ( since webview gift batching is not really versatile enough), it does not make sense that this is intentional.

Any Blackbaud person can provide insight to this?

Alex Wong

My team just went and try, it seems you are able to delete, however, you need to use Admin > Global Delete function to delete webview created gift.

Not able to normally just delete from gift record window is definitely looking more like BUG than feature.

Brenda Travis

This is what I ended up doing but it doesn't make sense to keep this “0” record in the file. Thank you for your help! ?

Anthony Gallo

Hey Everyone,

I can weigh in here. The thought process for NXT is that we have checks before a gift can be committed and those gifts are usually posted with GL information or transaction data. These should be valid gifts and if they need to be removed, we believe that it should be done thru an adjustment.

We have had some request from partners to delete gifts that are test gifts or gifts added in error thru that process and we are working on updating our API to allow for these third party gifts to be deleted.

The only information we have for the need for gift deletion at this time is that some orgs are entering test gifts and they would like to delete them once finished. If that is the case we would like to figure out a better testing process. If there are other scenarios where gift deletion is needed, I would love to have that conversation and see some examples here so we can all get on the same page.

Thanks
Anthony

Alex Wong

Anthony Gallo:

Hey Everyone,

I can weigh in here. The thought process for NXT is that we have checks before a gift can be committed and those gifts are usually posted with GL information or transaction data. These should be valid gifts and if they need to be removed, we believe that it should be done thru an adjustment.

We have had some request from partners to delete gifts that are test gifts or gifts added in error thru that process and we are working on updating our API to allow for these third party gifts to be deleted.

The only information we have for the need for gift deletion at this time is that some orgs are entering test gifts and they would like to delete them once finished. If that is the case we would like to figure out a better testing process. If there are other scenarios where gift deletion is needed, I would love to have that conversation and see some examples here so we can all get on the same page.

Thanks
Anthony

Hi Anthony,

Thank you for weighting in here, as Blackbaud perspective is very important for us, clients.

I find that your explanation, while make some sense, does not take the overall RE (and FE) product into consideration.

• RE NXT still have database view, and from many Blackbaud training/instructor, it is still recommended for majority of gift entry, it should be done through RE NXT database view since web view's functionality for bulk gift processing is inferior to database view's gift batching.
  • Gifts recreated in database view can still be deleted without any issue, as long as the user have rights to delete gift, per security permission.
  • For web view created gifts to not conform to the same security permission (when in database view) is absurd in my opinion. (i'm not talking about being able to delete gift from web view, i'm talking not being able to login to database view and delete the web view created gift).
• Not all customer use FE NXT with RE NXT, so the posting/adjustment comment may not apply to all customer of RE NXT.
  • Not to mention that even if customer uses RE and FE NXT with integration (our org does), posting of gifts into FE is not done right away when web view gifts are created. There is usually a process of checks and data correction before posting happens. If a gift IS posted, then adjustment will have to be used, Business as Usual there.
  • What I am trying to express is, I don't think it is correct to “tie” web view gift creation to RE gift being posted to FE.

As to reason for deleting gift, here's a few from our perspective:

• Consistency of what can be done to gift record when in database view
• Test gift record
• Gift incorrectly applied to pledge but is actually not payment

Of course, the “work around” is to just edit the gift to $0 (if not posted). However, it leaves a useless record in the RE system.

As mentioned before, my team did found a way to delete gift that was created in web view, through global delete, you can see ticket #018403497 if you have access. It seems that your support team doesn't know this is possible.

Problem though I'm having with our “new found” way to delete gift is, obviously in the database table somewhere Blackbaud is indicating the gift as “web view created” differentiating gift that “can” be delete from gift record menu vs cannot. I'm concern that the “global delete” option to delete the gift record that was web view created was not “correctly" deleting gift taken into consideration of “other” database table and/or “fields/columns” thereby potentially corrupting the RE database. Please have your team look into this, to make sure the correct foreign key constaints is done with specific info that is “webview” related.

Alex

Elizabeth Anders 2

Thank you, Alex, for identifying a work around. Has anyone from Blackbaud responded regarding your concerns of using Global Delete to remove Test and other gift records created via RE/NXT web view?

Brenda Travis

I came across another problem the other day. I keep an "anonymous" file for mostly cash gifts collected. When entering, I mistakenly put the entry in another file beginning with 'an'. Easy enough to edit the constituent to move the money over but the system did not recognize the file 'anonymous". I enterered several different ways thinking I misspelled it, etc. I had to go into the database to add the gift to the Anonymous file. Then I tried to zero out the gift amount in the other file, and it wouldn't accept 0 -- had something to do with the receipt, so I left it in as $1.00.

Rachel Cavalier

Are the “wrong” constituent record and the Anonymous record both Individual constituents or is one and Organisation?

Our Anonymous record is an organisation record, and you can't move gifts between organisations and individuals. The way we deal with this is to have another record that just gets flipped between being an organisation and individual to be the “middleman” in the process because messing about with the key indicator on “real” records seems like a bad idea.

Laura Jo Anderson

A huge THANK YOU to Alex Wong and Karen Diener for their super helpful comments on this thread. In May/June I spent a LONG time going through this very issue with NXT support and my Account Rep. I was not given either of the solutions that Alex and Karen offered.

I've given Bb my feedback about the need to be able to delete gift records that are created in NXT and I whole-heartedly agree with the reasons that Alex outlines. I do my best to avoid incorrect entries, but mistakes happen. Some happened while I (the DBA) was on vacation and that lead me back to the community to search for answers. I'm so grateful to Brenda for asking the question and to everyone who chimed in with these helpful responses. Cheers!

Alex Wong

Blackbaud support's answer is:

Gifts added in web view cannot be deleted in database view

Gifts that were added through web view cannot be deleted in database view.

How do we delete gifts that were added in Webview? Why can't we delete gifts? We have a gift we want to delete but we can't delete it.

Answer:

Gifts added through RE NXT webview cannot be deleted in webview or in database view.

This is working as designed. Upon review of the functionality, gifts added through webview (including those added through SKY API connections) cannot be deleted.

I consulted internally and this remains as shown above. In order to keep a record of gift entered in NXT, these cannot (should not) be deleted. The workaround did work, but they are currently working in a way to delete gifts in Webview and be able to keep a record of it.

So I guess Blackbaud is being careful to tell us to wait for the “proper” way to delete gift in webview.

Alex

Austen Brown

There is another workaround that doesn't involve the Global Delete function - personally, I try to use the global delete function as little as possible.

1. Create a brand new constituent record in RE (either view works).

2. Use the move a gift feature in Web View to move the gift in question onto the new constituent record.

3. Back in Database View, open the constituent record and ensure that the gift you want to delete is listed. Then delete the newly created constituent record.

Alex Wong

@Austen Brown
I like your process in that it takes more steps to delete thereby making sure you don't accidently delete.

Another method I use now is a delete Add-in on gift. Using SKY API and Add-in, I create a DELETE action on constituent record and gift record, which trigger a Power Automate to delete the constituent/gift using the DELETE SKY API call. This allows me to check who is doing deleting and deny the action, and check if the constituen/gift should be deleted or not.