PatronManager Help

Donation Transactions: Preparation Guide

Updated on

Use this link to share with your colleagues:

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:

  1. Prevent double-counting (by making sure parent records use the correct fields)
  2. 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.

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.

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.

Previous Article How to Schedule Financial Reports to Run Regularly
Next Article Donation Transactions Overview
Still Need Help? Continue to the Client Community