The User's Edge : receipts

7/22 Forum Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:01:00 GMT

Here are last week's most popular forum discussions as well as unanswered posts:

Most popular topics:

Unanswered Posts:

Join the discussion over at the forums.

4/28 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:59:00 GMT

Here are last week's most popular forum discussions as well as unanswered posts:

Most popular topics:

Unanswered Posts:

A couple of users had questions about creating Policies and Procedures manuals this past week:

Join the discussion!

4/22 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:31:00 GMT

Here's a pair of unanswered forum posts from the past week:

Leslie Heisler of Southwestern Vermont Health Care has a question about issuing a receipt for a gift that was made by cashier's check. If you have experience with this, reply to Leslie.

Marla Strickland of the Peabody Essex Museum is working on sending Renewal letters to soft credit recipients. If you have a best practice for this, reply to Marla.

The April issue of Fundraising Well was sent today. Fundraising Well is a monthly nonprofit newsletter that features methods to improve fundraising efficiency through the use of modern technologies and philosophies. This month, Bob Cramer, co-founder, CEO, and chairman of ThePort^™ Network, Inc., offers his insight on how social networking can help nonprofits in a down economy and how building online social communities to create more personal relationships with supporters can help your organization gain a competitive edge.

Subscribe to Fundraising Well to receive each issue in your inbox, and view past issues in the archive. Also, check out the new Fundraising Well blog, which you can follow with its RSS feed.

Last August, Kevin Brunson wrote a post about the Fundraising Effectiveness Project administered by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. In the coming weeks, look for additional posts about this project, and how it can help your organization.

On a lighter note, check out the April Fools Fun! thread to read about some of the shenanigans perpetrated by members of the community on April Fools Day and share your own stories.

What would you like to read about in an upcoming blog post? The first topic suggested in the comment section on this post will be the subject of a post in the next week. Only suggestions related to The Raiser's Edge, please.

Mail Musings: A Brief History of eReceipts

Douglas Clinton — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:26:00 GMT

The earliest receipt was developed by our Neanderthal ancestors, who used large, heavy rocks to acknowledge the exchange of goods or services. This led to a great deal of confusion, as these same rocks were also used as currency, and all available goods and services were in some way rock-related. Over the millennia, the receipt evolved, rocks gave way to clay tablets, papyrus, parchment, and ultimately the modern paper receipt. In recent years, evolution has leaped forward, providing humankind with a new tool: the electronic receipt. In The Raiser's Edge, eReceipts let you create and send receipts without creating anything on paper.

When you work with eReceipts, you must specify an SMTP mail server and port number for your local email server that will be used to send electronic receipts. This information is added to The Raiser's Edge under Configuration, Business Rules, Mail options. If you are hosted by Blackbaud, you will need to request that your organization be configured to use SMTP relay before you run eReceipts for the first time. Create a case or email OnDemandSupport@blackbaud.com and an analyst will assist you.

Once this is configured, enter the following in the SMTP field: re-relay.hurricane.blackbaudhost.com. Enter 25 in the Port Number field.

If you have created custom receipts in the Mail module before, using eReceipts will be a snap. The process is the same way in that you open a new Receipt parameter file in Mail and select Create custom data file as the Receipt Type on the General tab. On the Fields to Include tab, select the fields to include on the receipt.

On the eReceipts tab, mark the Send as eReceipts checkbox and select Write Message. Indicate who the email is from, specify the subject, and then compose an email to accompany the receipt, using the Insert Field button to add the merge fields you selected on the Fields to Include tab. Once you are done, click OK to save the email and then specify the Email Types to Use. Select Send to Word Merge Wizard, save the new receipt parameters, and click Next to begin the Mail Merge Wizard. You can select to mark gifts as receipted, receipted and acknowledged, or Do Not Update as appropriate.

If you are creating one type of receipt for all donors, select to perform a simple mail merge using only one document. If you are creating customized receipts based on fields such as gift type, campaign, fund, appeal, or letter code, select to perform a conditional mail merge using multiple documents. Add the receipt template(s) to the wizard, and click Finish to merge them and send receipts electronically. The receipts will preview for record-keeping purposes. When the preview appears, the email message will have already been sent with the receipt as a PDF attachment.

You can read more about eReceipts in Knowledgebase solution BB186795.

Mail Musings: One Way to Consolidate

Kevin Brunson — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:54:00 GMT

A little over a week ago I was at the Charleston Conference speaking with clients in the Customer Support booth. (A little shout out, if you were at the conference and stopped by, it was nice meeting you and getting to know a little more about your organization). One thing I noticed while speaking to clients is there were a lot of questions that focused on one major theme: the Mail module. There were questions on Labels, Envelopes, Donor Acknowledgement Letters, Receipts, etc. So in light of the number of questions about Mail, I decided that my next few posts will focus on mailings.

To get started, I wanted to talk a little about Consolidated Receipts. As we are close to the end of the year, I thought this was a good topic to start with. Consolidated receipts are exactly what they sound like; they combine all of the donor's individual gifts into one receipt. So if a donor gave 5 gifts over the year, instead of getting 5 individual receipts, the donor would receive one receipt with the total gift amount. For donors who don't want to receive individual receipts for each donation (for example, monthly payroll deduction or recurring direct debit or credit card donors), consolidated receipts are a great solution.

The first step is to set up the donor’s record to receive consolidated receipts. To do this, open the donor’s record and go to the Bio2 tab. In the Receipt type field select Consolidated receipts, and save the record. To create and send your donors consolidated receipts, use the following steps:

Create a query of constituents with a consolidated receipt type.
Add the desired output fields and check the query results. Save and close the query.
In Mail, create a new Receipt parameter set.
On the General tab, select the desired receipt type. If using pre-printed receipts, select Pre-printed receipts. If creating a custom receipt in Microsoft Word, select Create custom data file.
Select to Include records from the query created in step 1.
On the Fields to include tab, select the fields that you want included on your receipts.
Complete the remaining tabs to create the receipts.

The end result is each donor will receive a consolidated receipt that summarizes his giving for the date range for which you ran the mailing. For more information on running consolidated receipts, check out Knowledgebase solution BB29002.

Does your organization use consolidated receipts? If so, do you have any suggestions for your fellow Raiser's Edge users? If you do, please leave a comment on this post.

Mail Musings: Maintaining Order

Douglas Clinton — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:48:00 GMT

You can print labels or envelopes in the same order as your quick letters, donor acknowledgement letters, or receipts by using an output query. This way, when you print the labels or envelopes, they will print in the same order as your mailing, saving you time during the envelope-stuffing process.

On the General tab in your mailing, mark the Create output query checkbox and select Constituent as the query type. When you run the mailing, you will be prompted to save the output query.

After you print the letters, open Envelopes or Labels. On the General tab, include the output query you created when you processed the mailing. On the Format tab, mark Sort by the following fields and move Query from the Available Fields box to the Sort Fields box.

The labels or envelopes will print in the same order as your mailing. You can also find this information in Knowledgebase: it's BB117332.