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Payment and Confirmation Exceptions on Donations and How to Resolve Them: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1011445
Sometimes, when a Donation is processed, unexpected things can happen, resulting in an Exception on the Donation that needs to be resolved. There are two types of Exceptions that can happen on Donations:
Payment Exceptions happen when something goes awry with the credit card payment, like the payment timing out or an expired card being automatically charged on a Recurring Donation. To fix the issue, sometimes you'll need to rerun the transaction; other times, you'll just need to manually enter some info into PatronManager.
Confirmation Exceptions happen when payment has been processed successfully, but something prevents the Acknowledgment Email from being sent to the patron. To fix the issue, you'll typically need to manually send the acknowledgment.
So how do you know what to do? That's what we're here for! In this article, we'll walk you through how to resolve your Payment / Confirmation Exceptions on Donations from start to finish:
- Find a list of your Donation Payment / Confirmation Exceptions
- Enter the Resolve Exception process for
- Resolve the Exception
If you've received an email about a Payment or Confirmation Exception, you can start on step 2 - entering the Resolve Exception process.
This should take approximately 10-30 minutes, depending on which resolution path you need to follow and whether or not you need to contact your donor.
Your Donation Administrator gets an email for every Donation in Payment / Confirmation Exception. They should make sure to resolve any Exceptions as soon as possible.
1. Find a list of your Donation Payment / Confirmation Exceptions
While your Donation Administrator should keep on top of all the Payment and Confirmation Exceptions as they come in, sometimes you'll want to see a list of any and all Exceptions in your system.
1.1. Go to your Donations tab
1.2. Change your list view to Donation Exceptions
No worries! We'll walk you through creating one in just a few steps.
1.2.1. First, make sure your list view is set to All Donations
1.2.1. Click the Show filters button
1.2.1.1. Click Add Filter
1.2.1.2. Set up your filter for Exceptions
- Field: Processing Status
- Operator: equals
- Value: check Payment Exception and Confirmation Exception
- Click Done
1.2.1.3. Use the drop-down arrow to Save As
1.2.1.4. Make your List Name "Donation Exceptions" then Save
Unless certain members of your team should not be able to see Payment / Confirmation Exceptions (but should be able to see other kinds of Donations), we recommend selecting "All users can see this list view".
Awesome! Your Donation Administrator's goal is to make sure this list view is always empty
If you're the designated Donation Administrator, you'll receive an email when a Donation enters an Exception status.
This is what an email you receive might look like, along with a link to the Donation record and the Task:
You can also find all your open tasks on your Home tab in PatronManager:
The task is also visible to all users on the Donation record Activity tab:
Click "View All" to see all tasks.
You can also create a report of all Donation records in Exception status
A report is useful if you want to keep track of all Donation records in Exception status - and you can subscribe to the report if you'd like notifications. The report below is based on the All Donations packaged report template, and it includes the following filters
- Show me: All Donations
- Close Date: All Time
- Processing Status equals Confirmation Exception, Payment Exception
If you aren't super familiar with the facets of report filters, check out this article about report filters to learn more.
2. Enter the Resolve Exception process
Scroll down on a Donation record and click the Resolve Payment / Confirmation Exception link
When a recurring donation that's due doesn't process, you'll see a link to view and resolve the Exception in a couple different places, including:
- The Recurring Donation record
- The Donation record
The Transaction Details section of the Donation record also shows the Error Message details.
3. Resolve the Exception
Once you click the link to resolve the Exception, you've entered the process to start! We'll walk you through what to do depending on what you see:
When you get a Confirmation Exception, it likely means the email address on the donor's Contact record isn't correct or that the acknowledgment email wasn't sent when the transaction happened.
In other words, the Donation itself has been processed, but the confirmation email wasn't sent to the donor.
Before resolving the Exception, check to make sure that the donor's email address on their Contact record is correct.
3.1. Update the Contact with a valid email address
Now that you've updated the Contact's email address, you can resolve the exception.
3.2. Navigate to the Donation record with the exception
The Donation record is linked in the task that generates in PatronManager, the corresponding email your Donation Administrator receives, and for recurring gifts, it's on the Recurring Donation record as well.
3.3. Scroll down to the Description Information section and click on the "Resolve Payment/Confirmation Exception" link
Here you can also see the Error Message for why this Confirmation Exception happened: in this case the email failed to send because of a bounced email address.
3.4. Decide how to acknowledge the donor and click "Acknowledge Donation"
3.5. Now, let's go resolve the Task - on the newly-resolved Donation record, click on the task in the Activities
3.6. Click on the down-arrow to the right in the Highlights panel and click "Change Status"
3.7. Select "Completed" from the Status dropdown and click "Save"
3.8. All good!
When you receive a Payment Exception the first thing to do is look at the Error Message on the Exception. It's most likely due to an issue with the donor's credit card.
3.1. Refer to the Error Message to determine how to resolve the Exception
You can resolve Payment Exceptions in one of two ways:
- Resubmit the Donation with new credit card information.
- Delete the Donation record and recreate the Donation from scratch.
Recurring Donation Error: Stored Payment Method is Expired
This means the card used to pay for the Recurring Donation expired and the payment didn't go through. You'll need to contact the donor for updated card information.
Attempt to de-reference a null object
This is a pretty generic error - best to contact Client Support with a case via the Client Community to assess the root cause.
If you can't figure out what the Error Message means, submit a case via the Client Community so that the Client Support team can assist.
3.2. Once you've resolved the Exception, navigate to the Task associated with the Payment Exception
This will be back on the Donation record itself.
3.3. Click on the down-arrow to the right in the Highlights panel and click "Change Status"
3.4. Select "Completed" from the Status dropdown and click "Save"
3.5. All good!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Recurring Donations can throw an Exception for a number of reasons, but here are a few common ones:
- A temporary hold on the donor's card may cause it to fail, but retrying the payment a day or two later will work
- Some other issue where the card can't be charged at all, such as when a credit card has expired or been cancelled
- Sometimes the email on the donor's Contact bounced
To find these issues, each night the system checks on any recurring donations that were supposed to be processed that day. Then, PatronManager generates these "Review Problematic Recurring Donation" tasks if any scheduled payment failed to process successfully and sends the tasks to your Donation Administrator.
That way, you can see when you need to jump in and contact the patron to get an updated email or credit card information, or find out what's going on.