Greeting all! We are thinking of implementing the bar coding system here to make the life of our gift processors easier. (for pledge reminders, direct mail entry etc) I am however, having trouble finding information concerning: equipment needed cost effectiveness or any other details. I checked in the knowledge base but it just has troubleshooting posts. Does anyone here use the bar coding feature with RE7? I would love your opinion on it or just a little direction as to where I can find some more information. Thanks!

We do use the appeal barcode. It does have some glitches and workarounds, but it is so helpful to gift entry. It's great for the mailings we send out and can add the barcode. The cost of the scanner was around $250.00. Very inexpensive for the aid in gift entry.

Try it - you will like it.

Renee Grayson
Sioux Valley Health System Foundation
1305 W. 18th St.
Sioux Falls, SD 57117
605-328-5700
605-333-1962 fax

We bought the bar scanner for around the same price. It's a great idea, but we had glitches, too. When the plege form was scanned it automatically put the gift in as a pledge. This caused problems with many of the gifts. What type of glitches did you have? Thanks for any help you can give us.

The pledge gift type was one our issues. We just overwrite it and consider getting the constituent, appeal, package and fund in from scanning a huge plus. You also have to enter the gift amount. We just organize our gifts in order of gift amounts and use the default. If we have several that are the same, it is quicker. Another issue is using the appeal cards to get the barcode information outputted. I wish we could output the barcode in other areas of RE such as export. Appeal Cards won't let you "touch" only the head of household so you have to be sure you have your query clean to that point. Renee Grayson Sioux Valley Health System Foundation 1305 W. 18th St. Sioux Falls, SD 57117 605-328-5700 605-333-1962 fax

The gift processor at the time said she couldn't overwrite the pledge gift type. How were you able to overwrite it? We haven't had a chance to work out the problem, we haven't used the barcode for months, unfortunately. Paula Whisted Director of Research & Database Management University of Baltimore 1130 N. Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21201 410.837.6139

We manually change it in batch. Let it flow in with the scanner and then change the gift type to whatever is necessary. Renee Grayson Sioux Valley Health System Foundation 1305 W. 18th St. Sioux Falls, SD 57117 605-328-5700 605-333-1962 fax