Gifts posted to deceased spouse need to be credited to living spouse

Marcia Reed · November 2015

We have a couple, each with their own record; in 2000, John died. Joanne was not marked as HOH on John's record. Gifts have continued to be posted to John's record, soft crediting Joanne. What is the best way to have the gifts be credited to Joanne, save going in and deleting re-entering all 17 gifts.

HELP!

Jen Claudy · November 2015

Unfortunately, I don't think there is a particularly good solution here. If I'm understanding you correctly, I think what you might consider is using the Merge Constituent function to move all their gifts to Joanne's record. Then you'll need to go thru one-by-one (maybe Global Change, but I'm not sure) and update the Soft Credit Tab to soft credit John for gifts before 2000 and ensure there is no soft credit to John for gifts 2000 and after. Still a bit of manual work, but better than re-entering all of those gifts.

I would strongly recommend setting up two dummy records with this same problem exhibited by 3-4 gifts, and test out your "fix" before doing it on the actual records. Or ensure that a backup of your database has been recently made and alert your users to stay out for a period of time, just in case you have to restore a backup to fix an error. Merging constituents can be a tricky endeavor, in my experience. And Global Change can definitely do things in a way I would never have expected...

Ryan Hyde · November 2015

If you're not skittish of doing imports, you could do the following:

Grab all of the pertinent gifts via a query
Export all data for each gift, including the constituent ID and the spouse constituent ID
Globally delete the gifts in the query
Import the gifts using the spouse's constituent ID as the constituent ID and the deceased's constituent ID as the soft credit ID

I haven't imported soft credits before, so it might be that you need the import ID instead of the constituent ID. For that matter, you could just follow steps 1-4 and use the import ID instead - it's generally safer to do so.

And definitely try this on some dummy records before you do it to the real deal.

Finally, you'll just need to create some system to ensure that new gifts are no longer put on the deceased's record.

Ryan Hyde · November 2015

Addendum: duh, you probably don't want to soft credit the deceased for gifts made after he passed, so forget about exporting the deceased's constituent ID. Just export the spouse's ID with each record and use that to import the gifts onto her record.

JoAnn Strommen · November 2015

Just an additional note to prevent it from happening - You can create a business rule that would pop-up if you are entering a gift on a deceased person's record. You just need a query of all records marked as deceased and user rights to add a business rule. Can be helpful as long as data entry persons heed the pop up warning.

John Heizer · November 2015

"I'm not dead yet!"

One of those crazy side-effects of being named "John."

Sounds like this is a good opportunity to get more votes for this suggestion for a future release of RE: http://rediscovery.uservoice.com/forums/137015-raiser-s-edge-discovery-topics/suggestions/3049364-allow-to-move-gift-to-another-record

Nicole Holt · November 2015

Funnily, we just had a similar problem. We used a gift export to move the soft-credits to a dummy account, which was deleted (see https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/51526), and then used the merge function to move the gifts to the spouse's record.

Gina Gerhard · November 2015

I have always advocated for a strong process around the changes that need to be made for deceasing a constituent record -- and one of the items that is frequently missed is turning off the auto-soft crediting between spouses when one has deceased.

What can help is periodic review of recently deceased records to make sure all the changes have been made correctly. Soft crediting is one of the more important things that should be checked.

Ryan Hyde · November 2015

To address this sort of issue, I have a query set up to find relationships to deceased spoues and a saved global change that removes the "automatically soft credit" checkbox on the relationship record. I then just run this global change periodically (about once a week) to keep my records clean.

Here's my query parameters, if anyone is interested:

This Individual is the spouse = YES
AND Individual Relation Deceased = YES
AND Automatically soft credit this individual for gifts = YES
[uncheck "include deceased constituents at the top]

Then you do a "Individual/Contact/Employee Relationship" global change that simply looks like this:

Automatically soft credit gifts: Replace Checked with Unchecked (or "add unchecked / overwrite existing value"

Once it's all set up, you have a one button solution to the problem.

Amy Matthews · November 2015

To prevent this happening in the future, you can actually have the system do a variety of things for you automatically when you mark a constituent as deceased. If you go to Config, Business Rules, Constituent Options, Deceased Options - you can choose to upgrade the spouse as a constituent, soft credit them for past gifts, and no longer apply soft credits to the deceased individual:

While this won't prevent someone from adding gifts to the deceased's record, you can do that with a User Defined Business Rule, like JoAnn suggested.

Ryan Hyde · November 2015

See, I have the "no longer soft credit the deceased for gifts given by the spouse" checkbox checked, but it doesn't seem to work 100% of the time. I still get 1 or 2 records per week that get changed via the system I set up.

Gina Gerhard · November 2015

I just have found that a manual check of deceased records to look for all the things that have to be changed will catch any anomalies. But we don't have a lot of deceased records to check on a regular basis so I can still do this manually ...

Also, don't forget divorced spouses as well, this soft credit selection also has to be turned off!

Ryan Hyde · November 2015

Yeah, my query actually has an OR ( ... ) section to identify those folks as well.

continued from previous query:

OR (This individual is the spouse = NO
AND Automatically soft credit this indiviudal for gifts = YES
AND individual relation Recip Relation Code one of: Spouse, Surviving Spouse, Former Spouse
AND Indivudal relation code one of: spouse, surviving spouse, former spouse)

JoAnn Strommen · November 2015

I ran Ryan's original query just to check our data. Pulled 0 records.

The reason it pulled 0 and that works for us in both cases of deceased and divorced is to uncheck the spouse box. We initially did this because we use many joint addressees/salutations and unchecking the box auto changed them to one name instead of the two. The relation/reciprocal fields can stay with spouse or be changed to former spouse for historic reference.

Just another thought...

Elizabeth Rich · November 2015

I put a pop-up message on deceased folks, so the gift processor (and I) will think twice before adding gifts on deceased records.

Ryan Hyde · November 2015

That's interesting about unchecking the "spouse" box. See, we do this when do this (and we do) it doesn't automatically uncheck the "soft credit" box. Is there a business rule somewhere for this that I've overlooked?

JoAnn Strommen · November 2015

Since the spouse box is not checked they won't pull in the query so I'd need to adjust query to filter on relationship fields. For our org's purpose I'm not worried about a SC on a deceased spouse record if it does happen. Gifts posted to deceased person would be an issue, hence the business rule.

Ryan Hyde · November 2015

Oh, I see the point you were trying to make now

And your business rule for deceased constituents is very good. I can't honestly think of a time when a gift was errantly put on a deceased person's record here, but I think I'll create something similar just to be on the safe side.

Amy Matthews · November 2015

Ryan Hyde:

See, I have the "no longer soft credit the deceased for gifts given by the spouse" checkbox checked, but it doesn't seem to work 100% of the time. I still get 1 or 2 records per week that get changed via the system I set up.

I may be mis-interpreting the way you're pulling your query, so apologies if I'm wrong! But, it looks like the query you're using is pulling any Individual relationship who is a spouse, and who has any other relationship to a deceased individual (not necessarily that their constituent spouse is deceased.) I have definitely made queries that don't quite do what I think they're doing - so you might do some checking on which relationships are being altered.

Nicole S · November 2015

Ryan Hyde:

See, I have the "no longer soft credit the deceased for gifts given by the spouse" checkbox checked, but it doesn't seem to work 100% of the time. I still get 1 or 2 records per week that get changed via the system I set up.

Could this could be because those were set up before the box was checked?

Ryan Hyde · November 2015

Maybe? But that seems like a poorly designed feature if it's contingent on when the records were created.

Ryan Hyde · November 2015

Amy Matthews:

Ryan Hyde:

See, I have the "no longer soft credit the deceased for gifts given by the spouse" checkbox checked, but it doesn't seem to work 100% of the time. I still get 1 or 2 records per week that get changed via the system I set up.

I may be mis-interpreting the way you're pulling your query, so apologies if I'm wrong! But, it looks like the query you're using is pulling any Individual relationship who is a spouse, and who has any other relationship to a deceased individual (not necessarily that their constituent spouse is deceased.) I have definitely made queries that don't quite do what I think they're doing - so you might do some checking on which relationships are being altered.

I had a similar concern, so I extensively checked the records before I started executing any global changes. It seems that the query is smart enough to realize that I'm looking for one relationship that meets all criteria, not one constituent that has a set of relationships that meet those criteria in combination.

Anyone looking to model what I did should absolutely test and re-test before they execute a global change though! This is a totally valid concern!

Catherine Hegarty · November 2015

Ryan Hyde:

To address this sort of issue, I have a query set up to find relationships to deceased spoues and a saved global change that removes the "automatically soft credit" checkbox on the relationship record. I then just run this global change periodically (about once a week) to keep my records clean.

Here's my query parameters, if anyone is interested:

This Individual is the spouse = YES

AND Individual Relation Deceased = YES

AND Automatically soft credit this individual for gifts = YES

[uncheck "include deceased constituents at the top]
Then you do a "Individual/Contact/Employee Relationship" global change that simply looks like this:
Automatically soft credit gifts: Replace Checked with Unchecked (or "add unchecked / overwrite existing value"
Once it's all set up, you have a one button solution to the problem.

How do I set up gifts to automically soft credit?

Catherine Hegarty · November 2015

JoAnn Strommen:

Just an additional note to prevent it from happening - You can create a business rule that would pop-up if you are entering a gift on a deceased person's record. You just need a query of all records marked as deceased and user rights to add a business rule. Can be helpful as long as data entry persons heed the pop up warning.

How do I set up this business rule?

Christine Robertson · November 2015

If you are moving the gifts to the living spouse, I would simply merge all gifts from the deceased spouse to the living spouse and click the box to exclude soft credits. You don't have to merge the whole record - you can select to merge just the gifts. This means that you won't have to delete any history and it will take less time than exporting, etc. as suggested above.

Heather MacKenzie · December 2015

JoAnn Strommen:

Just an additional note to prevent it from happening - You can create a business rule that would pop-up if you are entering a gift on a deceased person's record. You just need a query of all records marked as deceased and user rights to add a business rule. Can be helpful as long as data entry persons heed the pop up warning.

JoAnn - I have this set, but cannot not make it work in batch entry. Have you been able to do that? Do your offices use batch entry for gift entry?

Heather

Jen Claudy · December 2015

Heather MacKenzie:

JoAnn Strommen:

Just an additional note to prevent it from happening - You can create a business rule that would pop-up if you are entering a gift on a deceased person's record. You just need a query of all records marked as deceased and user rights to add a business rule. Can be helpful as long as data entry persons heed the pop up warning.

JoAnn - I have this set, but cannot not make it work in batch entry. Have you been able to do that? Do your offices use batch entry for gift entry?

Heather

It needs to be set up as a Gift Business Rule, not a Constituent Business Rule for the alert to pop up when entering new gifts. I recently did this as a test when writing a response to another thread, and it worked in Batch. (Make sure that you've also selected the correct Security User Groups for the Rule).

Elaine Tucker · December 2015

All the notes on how to move the gifts are good, and if you have not yet voted on "move one gift" in the user voice please do.

We have a constitutent business rule pop up that alerts any RE user if they open a deceased record; hopefully this will alleviate any future data entry on a deceased record.

Gifts posted to deceased spouse need to be credited to living spouse

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