Query vs Export-Neither seems to Meet my needs

Bryan Horz · November 2020

Hi

I need to create a report of all gifts processed for the day in excel format. The report needs to include the Constituent Code which I know will create dupes in Query if a constituent has multiple. I decided to use export but export didn't work for me because if someone has 2 gifts for that day, it rolls them up even though they have different funds. Also, in export I cant seem to reorder the fields the way I want them. The gift information cant seem to be moved below the constituent and fund information. These are all things that I was easily able to do in MS Access. Sorry I am brand new to RE and the training for query/exports was too basic and didn't address these issues

Thanks

Bryan

Marie Stark · November 2020

To answer your question about the gift to different funds, you should pick the amount under Funds, rather than the gift amount. That will give you the split amount.

Alan French · November 2020

If you use either the Primary Constituent Code or the Gift Constituency in a query, you won't get any duplicates as each record has only one of each. I personally wouldn't use a query for outputting this information though, as you could easily end up with duplicates in the list for other reasons.

Are you using a gift export, or a constituent export? A constituent export will give you one row per constituent (which sounds like your issue with multiple gifts being "rolled up") and a gift export will give you one row per gift, which sounds like what you're after. You're right that the gift fields have to stay at the top of a gift export, though you can reorder the other sections below for constituent, memberships etc.

Bryan Horz · November 2020

Thank you Marie. That worked. I didn't realize that our gift processing group entered the gift as a split gift instead of 2 separate gifts

Bryan Horz · November 2020

Thank you Alan. I didn't realize there is a Gift Constituency Code. Apparently Gift Queries don't have the Primary Constituency Code but that is good to know if I am creating a query of constituents. I would rather use export but It seems like I can't put the order of the fields the way my users want them. The Gift info always comes first. Wish there was a way to change this. If you have an ides let me know. Below is my export. I needed to have some of the Fund and constituent info before some of the gift info

Alan French · November 2020

The gift constituency code captures whatever the constituent's primary constituent code was at the time the gift was entered, so it's quite useful for analysing your donors retrospectively.

I'm not aware of a way to change the order of the fields to what you want, not in a gift export anyway.

Larry Wheeler · November 2020

As Alan French‍ said, I don't know of anyway to change the order of the columns in export.

In this case, I would just cut/insert those two columns to the front once you have the data in excel.

Also, if running a gift export with no other criteria than "today's gifts" you don't need a query. You can use the criteria button at the bottom of the export window to set your criteria.

Dariel Dixon 2 · November 2020

I agree with what everyone else is saying here. The inability to manipulate the columns in export is almost negated by doing so in another format, especially if you're exporting into a spreadsheet like Excel. If your gift processing group uses split gifts a lot, you may need to have those columns in your export regularly, even if they may be blank most of the time.

I think you'll find that the best way to learn export is to continue to play around in it. There will be a lot of trial and error. It does take some time to learn how it works, but you'll pick it up after some practice.

Bryan Horz · November 2020

Thank you Dariel

Jahna Balk 2 · November 2020

You could change the order by making a constituent query/export rather than a gift export to serve the same function. You would query on donors who made gifts that day instead of on the gifts.

This would also allow you to export additional information about your donor and break out your different funds or appeals into their own columns.

Query vs Export-Neither seems to Meet my needs

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