Donor address information doesn't update. What do you do?

The immediate answer is, we get it all messed up. The long-term answer is that Convio acknowledges the issue and has a feature request FR-15588. Following is their suggestion for what to do in the meantime, which we have decided not to do. Note that the user's new address entry is visible in the Interaction Details Report for Donation interactions. You can run such a report, download the results, and use Excel or the tool of your choice to find cases where the contact's address and the "billing address" do not match. To tell the truth, we don't do this either, but one could

Official Convio response:

"Created By: John Miller (12/18/2008 4:15 PM)

This is correct the billing address will not update the constituent record, and it is confusing for constituents. I have added your request to our existing enhancement request for the option to have this update the constituent record (FR-15588). In the meantime, you could use a survey that captures constituent information, and have the landing page of that survey be the donation form with billing information. This way, though the information would have to be entered twice, there would be discernibility between the billing and home address, and the constituent record would be updated."

Bryce Katzman:

Thanks so much for your response. However, when I ran a custom Interaction Details Report the address that already exists within the constituent's record (as well as the billing address which is different from the donor address) is showing rather than the new one that I had entered into a test donation.

Here's what we are doing:

Currently we are running the transaction report and saving it daily. We are then comparing Billing and Contact fields, and manually updating the constituent profile. We currently run a custom data sync and that adds to the process and anxiety. In our offline database we are setting the previous constituent record information as an alternate contact.

Here's more information about the issue E-30633:

"Whether the donor is logged in or not, a billing address for a transaction only updates the constituent address when (1) donor address fields do not also appear on the donation form and (2) the billing address offers an improvement (additional fields) to the constituent address. If these 2 conditions are met, then the entire constituent address is updated to match the billing address. One additional caveat is that street fields are considered as a single field, so if the existing constituent address has a value in street1, it is not considered an improvement for the billing address to have values in street1 and street2."

"So if you want an address entered on a donation form to always update the constituent address, then donor address fields must appear on the donation form along with the billing address fields. Donor address fields update the constituent address whether the donor is logged in or not. This addition of a second set of address fields (billing must always be present) is made slightly less onerous by the fact that donor address will be prepopulated for anyone who is logged in, and there is a "same as donor address" checkbox for filling in billing address. Donor address will always trump billing address with respect to updating the constituent address when both are present on the donation form. One final caveat to this is that some donation form templates refer to the billing address fields as "donor address", so care must be taken to make sure exactly which fields are appearing on your donation form."

I've suggested one possibility for development:

"I would suggest developing a rollback area in the interactions tab. Last touch with the donor would update their Profile, but you can review the 'Profile Change' entry on a screen similar to merge records. You could view the most recent change (current profile) beside the old profile and switch which is active. A second change would create another 'Profile Change' interaction with the new update, not all three. I know that could add up to a lot of data, so perhaps it can be purged after 2-3 profile changes."

Hope this helps.

Bryce Katzman:

KEv,

The odd thing is that when Convio mentions:

"So if you want an address entered on a donation form to always update the constituent address, then donor address fields must appear on the donation form along with the billing address fields. Donor address fields update the constituent address whether the donor is logged in or not. This addition of a second set of address fields (billing must always be present) is made slightly less onerous by the fact that donor address will be prepopulated for anyone who is logged in, and there is a "same as donor address" checkbox for filling in billing address. Donor address will always trump billing address with respect to updating the constituent address when both are present on the donation form. One final caveat to this is that some donation form templates refer to the billing address fields as "donor address", so care must be taken to make sure exactly which fields are appearing on your donation form."

This not happening for us. We have chosen both Donor and Billing Address fields on our donation form, but the Donor fields do not update nor do they show on the Transaction Report, which makes us clueless on any changes that have been made.

Hi --

We're having the same problem here, and it's created some awkwardness with our donors. Just this week, we sent a notification to a woman from her deceased son, whose wife made the donation. She updated the donor information fields with her new info, but the system (and our reports) used his old info.

Has anyone come up with a solution for this?

Thanks!

Adelle

Leanna Blankenship:

Hi,

We've been struggling with bug 30633 since last summer since the last main upgrade rolled over and it started being a problem. VERY frustrated that it hasn't been fixed yet. We've also had similar problems with sending mail to old houses of split up couples and other important donors where we should 'know better'. Until recently, we had used the survey solution mentioned above where you have a fake landing screen asking for donor information in a survey, and the complete button sends people to the billing information where they have to enter their info a second time. Slightly obstructive to the donor, but 100% foolproof since the bug does not affect surveys, only donation forms and eCommerce forms.

The new solution that Convio support finally helped us with was to create a custom report that pulls any constituent who has given a gift in the last 7 days and compares their constituent address to the transaction address. If it is different in any way (even "street" spelled "st.") it is supposed to appear on the report and give you an opportunity to manually investigate and update when necessary. We've incorporated running this report into our regular gift download process for offline entry and have had success thus far without it being terribly intrusive to data entry folks. It's much better than making online donors click through an extra screen, and definitely better than ignoring the issue and losing donors in the process.

The person who set up the custom report was a 3rd party person through Convio support named Jeana. She told me that she had been asked to set this up for several clients. So file a support claim, ask for a custom query/report to deal with bug 30633, and someone should be able to get you set up.

Good luck,

Leanna

Any idea if the new update will fix this issue?

Jeana Hollingsworth:

An update on E-30633:

As of 07/2009 we have found and implemented a fix for this bug.  The fix has a few parts:

   * We can turn on and off a setting that will force billing address information to overwrite the constituent record.  By default this setting is off.  Contact your Account Manager if you want this turned on.

   * There is an autoresponder that is sent if a change is made to the name and/or the address of the constituent record by a transaction.  This autoresponder is enabled by default.  Currently, due to bug E-41154 this autoresponder cannot be disabled.  You can find and edit the content of this autoresponder by going to "Setup" > "Autoresponder Center".

The same issue applies to action pages. People often use these as a way to view and update their info. However, the improvements are lost.

Has Convio identified this problem as a bug? If so, what's the timeline for getting this fixed?

Although I have no hard data to back this up, I wouldn't be surprised if this contributes to our response rates having gone down since we migrated to Convio from GetActive.

Jeana Hollingsworth:

I am unaware of a bug being created on that as of yet.  I recommend submitting a case on this so that support can take a look at it.

I'm not sure about a bug, but there is a feature request pending to allow this behavior - FR-17210.  If it's possible to get this classified as a bug instead or in addition to the feature request, that's another great suggestion - thanks, Jeana!