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Donation Transactions: Preparation Guide: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1107604
As of the July 2019 release, PatronManager creates Payment Transaction records for all processed Donations, regardless of payment type. This provides you with better reporting capabilities and a clear Donation audit trail. Read more details here.
In this article, you'll prepare for the change so your reports are accurate later on. We'll show you how to:
- Prevent double-counting (by making sure parent records use the correct fields)
- Prevent missing donation transactions (by checking for post-dated Donations)
Once you've taken the steps outlined here, you'll be well on your way to comprehensive (and accurate) financial reporting!
1. Make sure parent records use the correct fields
If you're using Group Sales, Pledges, or tracking Grants in PatronManager, you're using parent and child records. In this setup, you track the entire interaction on the parent record, and the actual income on the child payment records.
In order to prevent double-counting money, those parent records use a special field -- "Total Amount", "Pledge Amount", or "Grant Amount", respectively -- while the child "Payment" records (the ones that record the income) use the regular "Amount" field like other Donations.
In order to ensure you're not double-counting money now (and to prevent duplicate Payment Transaction records later on), check your parent records to make sure you're using the right field to track the total.
1. Head over to Setup
2. Select "Object Manager", search for "Donation" in the quick find, and click on "Donation" in the list
3. Select "Page Layouts", then select the first page layout you'll edit
In this example, we'll use "Grant Layout" -- but you'll go through this process for each of the following Page Layouts, if they exist in your account:
- Grant Layout
- Group Sale Layout
- Pledge Layout
If you use a custom parent/child record structure for other purposes, check those parent record page layouts too.
4. In the palette at the top, make sure that "Amount" is NOT grayed out
In this example, see the difference between "Amount" and "Amount Paid"? "Amount is not grayed out, which means it is not on the page layout. "Amount Paid", on the other hand, is grayed out, which means it appears on the page layout.
Make sure that "Amount" is not on the page layout, as in this example.
5. If "Amount" IS grayed out, remove it from the page layout and replace with the correct option
Click the grayed-out field name in the palette to jump down to its location on the page layout. From there, hover over the field and click the minus sign to remove it from the page layout.
Then, search for "Amount" in the palette to find the correct option, and drag it onto the page layout where you'd like it to appear.
The correct field to use for each page layout is:
- Grant Layout: "Grant Amount"
- Group Sale Layout: "Total Amount"
- Pledge Layout: "Pledge Amount"
Heads up!
If you removed the "Amount" field from these parent page layouts, take note of which ones - you'll be doing some additional cleanup later.
6. Repeat the above steps for each relevant page layout
Remember, the three to check are:
- Grant Layout
- Group Sale Layout
- Pledge Layout
7. Clean up any data errors on prior Donations
Great! No clean-up necessary; you can move on to step 2.
You've adjusted the page layout(s) to remove the "Amount" field, so you won't be double-counting money going forward. That's great! Since the field was on the page layout(s) previously, though, you may have some messy data to clean up. Don't worry: we'll be happy to point you in the right direction to tidy it up!
Submit a support request, and tell us the specific parent page layout(s) that previously contained the "Amount" field. We'll take a look and let you know what to do next.
Once you've submitted that support request, move on to step 2.
Q: What about other kinds of Donations? Should I remove the "Amount" field from anything else?
A: Nope! Anything else you're tracking with the regular "Amount" field should be fine. Remember: you can always filter and group by Record Type and Payment Type in reports, so you'll be able to easily identify different kinds of Donation records and count them (or not) for different purposes.
2. Check for post-dated Donations
You should only set a Donation's Stage to Posted / Closed Won when you've received the money.
If you've entered any Donations as Posted but set the Close Date in the future, those Donation Records will not receive Payment Transactions, which will throw off your reporting. You'll need to adjust those Donation records so they can get Payment Transactions at the appropriate time.
Q: What do I do when a donation is given now, but should be applied next fiscal year?
A: Great question. We recommend you use a custom "Fiscal Year Applied" field to track this data. You can set up an automation to fill in the field automatically and accurately 99% of the time, and add it to your Donation page layouts so you can adjust its value when necessary.
1. Click the waffle to access the App Launcher, search for "Report" in the quick find, and click on "Reports"
2. Choose "All Folders" on the left, search for "all donation" in the quick find, and click on "All Donations" in the list
3. Click the filter icon to bring up the current report filters, and adjust the filters (if needed) as follows:
4. Adjust the filters (if needed) as follows
- Make sure "Show Me" is set to "All donations"
- Make sure the date range is using the "Close Date" field
- Make sure the Donation Status is set to "Closed Won"
- "Probability" should be set to either "All" or "100%"
Now click the "Close Date" filter to set a custom date range as follows:
- Set the "Range" dropdown to "Custom" to bring up the date fields
- Set "Start Date" to tomorrow's date
- Leave "End Date" blank
- When finished, click "Apply"
5. Refresh the report
Clicking "Apply" in the last step should have refreshed the report automatically, but let's click the "Refresh" button just in case
6. Were there any results?
If you had zero results, great! You're all finished here.
If your report returned results, you'll need to adjust those Donations - they should take about a minute each to fix.
Pro tip: if there are multiple results, right-click to open each in a new tab so you can keep the report handy!
Adjust the Donations as needed
- If the Close Date is incorrect and the Donation was already received, update the Close Date to the correct past date.
- If the Donation has not yet been received, update the Stage (to something like "Pledged" if you expect to receive the money on the indicated Close Date). When you receive the money, you'll come back and update the Stage to Posted.
- If the Donation was entered in error and does not have a Payment Transaction, delete it.
When you're finished, re-run the report
If you still have results, repeat the last step until there are no Posted Donations with future Close Dates.
Once the report is empty, you're all done!
You're ready to go!
Be sure to check out the complete overview of Donation Transactions to learn more about what's changing about Donation handling, including how to refund and re-process a Donation if you make a mistake while entering it.