Best way to batch

Isabel Paton · November 2022

Hi there, we are looking for thoughts on how best to regularly input a large number of donations. We have a slightly odd set up where some of our donations are included on invoices 3 x a year. Historically all this information was held in excel and sent to our finance team to include on the invoices to donors in the Autumn, Spring and Summer and then a list of who has donated is sent back to us and we would add to RE, however, we often don't hear back as to who did and did not donate for a few weeks. We would really like this information to be held on RE and not in excel. Does anyone have any advice on how to go about doing this? The only 2 ways I have thought of would be to create a batch, commit it and then delete anyone who does not donate later on. Or to create a new batch each time and wait to see who has donated before committing. We now have over 130 donors giving in this way and so it is quite time consuming, the problem with a recurring batch is that we have new people signing up each month and we are adding those to the batch, which means that we cannot commit it for the previous month as it contains new donors.

Rachel Cavalier · November 2022

@Isabel Paton

Could you put them in as pledges initially and then when you hear back about who actually donated put in the gifts to pay those pledges?

You could have a recurring batch of pledge gifts and then when new people sign up you can add them in for the next month rather than not being able to commit for the previous one.

Susan Yoksimovich 2 · November 2022

Isabel Paton Hi Isabel, where I work, we only batch gifts once the payment has been received and banked, and the batch total matches what went into the bank on that date. Could you ask for gifts received and deposited only, then batch based on that? I'd worry that by committing a batch, then deleting the random non-donations later is, if you miss one by accident, you're not matching what's in the bank and it could cause accounting problems trying to find it after. (We always do a Gift Adjustment any time we must edit or zero out a gift so there's a record trail).

Your idea to create a batch first and wait until you get confirmed gifts, then commit the batch, would be more secure for accurate gift entry. You can import the list of donors from a Constituent query to create a new batch each time to help speed that up. I like Rachel's idea of adding a Recurring Gift record to these particular constituent records first. You can identify the constituents that have that particular Recurring Gift, and create a constituent query based on that, eg. criteria contains Recurring Gift, gift date xx/xx/xxx, reference contains blah blah blah.

I hope this helps a little bit, best of luck, you'll do great!

Isabel Paton · November 2022

@Susan Yoksimovich Thanks Susan, I agree re committing gifts and then deleting, unfortunately it takes months for us to get the gifts as they are collected centrally with the school fees and then transferred whenever we can get finance to do it, the lack of procedures is frustrating, and historically it's really messy. Ideally I would have had everyone set up a direct debit instead. I was able to pull a constituent query into the batch but not the gifts because they all have different collection dates and I was unable to create a gift query showing just the next gift due (if that makes sense?)

Isabel Paton · November 2022

@Rachel Cavalier Thanks, they are set up as recurring gifts, I created a recurring batch, the problem is when new people sign up, we have been adding them to the batch, which means by the time the money comes through to us a few weeks later we cannot commit that batch because it new contains new people.

Susan Yoksimovich 2 · November 2022

@Isabel Paton Hi, that is a conundrum and it's difficult when you don't get the support you really need from another department. As gift trackers, we do need some level of control too. Is there anyone on your side ie. in management to get that information that you need and when you need it, maybe on a schedule?

Christine Cooke 2 · November 2022

@Isabel Paton This sounds like two challenges for one task. Woohoo!

First - you need to herd the cats and have backup from your supervisor in coming to an agreement that Finance will provide reports on a regular basis. For good stewarding and reporting for your department, I would suggest the middle and get them to agree to once a month. If there is pushback maybe see if they will give you access and show you how/where the report is and you can do it yourself.

Second - How about instead of a recurring batch which makes the fluctuations icky - a batch template with all the folks loaded. Every time you do a new batch pull that template into the batch and then edit/add/drop the names/donors as necessary. Templates are never committed, they are just a framework for different types of batches, I have set up and use about a half dozen batch templates that get utilized regularly, saves times and all

Best way to batch

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