Good Morning!

I'm new to BB, and the forums. We are having some difficulty finding out how long other non-profits typically keep their batch files in the system, and from how far back. We currently still have all batches ever created back until 2000.

 Any help would be appreciated!

Hi Jarrod.

We use a gift batch attribute for every gift and constituent batch in our system. This attribute allows us to query for specific batches as needed, so we don't need to keep our batches for long. Our policy is to keep two months of batches in our system. We process about 100 batches per month.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Karen

khartt@mainecf.org

We keep 3 months worth of batches.

Lindy Steen

HPH Hospice

Lindy.Steen@hphospice.net

Karen,

There's a batch number associated with every gift (found in the same place as date added/date last edited).  Is there an advantage to having a gift batch number attribute as well?  We print and save a validation report for every batch, and save those for three years.  I only keep batches on the system for about two weeks.

Leslie

I probably could shorten the length of time we have keep batches but until business mgr is more comfortable with RE, we've kept until audit completed for the year and then deleted that year.  We don't have as much volume as some so keeping previous years hasn't been a big deal.  When all staff is comfortable with RE, I'm guessing we'll keep a few months.

And yes, on each gift record at the bottom right corner of window there's a small yellow, white and tan icon (can't tell for sure what it is) that tells what batch gift is from.  If needed I can create a query of gifts in that batch.  Nice feature.

Hi,

We keep batches for about a month. Also, we keep static queries that batch module generates for about a month. As others already indicated, RE keeps a batch number within a gift. So if you need to run a query referencing the batch number you need, you can always do that. However, for those batches that are deleted, descriptions of them will not be available.

Other reasons to delete batches and especially static queries created by those batches are space on the server and system performance. If you use Net: Community, your site will perform much faster if you have less static queries.

Thanks to everyone for your input. We now have all of the proper information in hand, and are preparing to proceed!