Use this link to share with your colleagues:
How to Take Group Sale Payments Online: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1544269
If you process Group Sales in PatronManager, taking payments online can save you a lot of time and provide your patrons with a convenient way to pay off their balance.
Because Group Sales are built like Donation records in PatronManager, you can use a Donation Form to let your group sale patrons pay online.
In this article, we'll walk you through:
- A few things to make sure to set up in your Donation Form
- How to connect Group Sale Payments made from the Donation Form to Group Sale parent records
- Some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Setting up a new Donation Form to take Group Sale Payments online should take 20 minutes to 1 hour, depending on how complex you want your form to be and how familiar you are with creating Donation Forms.
Let's get started!
A simple, but very helpful, Group Sales tool!
Things to consider when setting up your Donation Form to take Group Sale Payments
When creating a Donation Form to take Group Sale Payments online, the actual building of the form will be the same as building any other Donation Form. You'll configure basic settings, add images and extra text, remove some unnecessary fields, and maybe even add some custom fields.
We have instructions on how to create a Donation Form available for you, and here we'll take a look at some special considerations when setting up a form to take Group Sale Payments.
Configure basic settings
Like any Donation Form, you'll want to configure the settings of the form to help keep everything clear. Here are some basic settings to double check when creating your Group Sale Payment form.
- Donation Form Name: Make sure to name your form clearly to avoid confusion with your fundraising or development team, like "Group Sale Payment Form" or "Group Sale Credit Card Form"
- Accept single or recurring donations?: Since Group Sale payments don't happen over an indefinite period of time, select Single only
- Active: Make sure this is checked
- Donation Record Type: Select Group Sale Payment to ensure all records created from this form are Group Sale Payment records (this will also help with reporting!)
- Single Donation Template: This determines the email that gets sent to patrons who use this form; we recommend creating a PatronDonate Classic Email Template to use here
- Confirmation Page Message: Make sure to update the language here to reference "Group Sale Payments" instead of "Donations" to avoid confusing your patrons filling out the form
Donation Levels vs. Write-In Amount
Because most Group Sales won't be the same, we recommend setting up your Donation Form for Group Sale Payments to use a write-in amount instead of donation levels.
Remove donation-specific fields
When you create a new Donation Form, you'll automatically get a bunch of fields and sections for things like Dedications and Acknowledgments. These fields are very helpful for Donation Forms for actual donations, but not as useful for a form used to take Group Sale Payments.
You can remove any fields you don't need to keep your form clear and concise.
Make the form work for you
You can create and add fields to this form to help you and your team out! Some examples of helpful custom fields you could add are:
- Group Name: Allow your patrons to save you some time and tell you what Group Sale they're paying for
- Updated Headcount: Let your patrons update you on how many seats they need so you can update their Group Sale and Ticket Order
- Opt-In or Signup Checkboxes: If you have some special opportunities for groups, like pre-show lectures or a post-show photo-op, you can add a field to let groups tell you if they plan to join right on the payment form
Connecting incoming Group Sale Payments to Group Sales
Since you'll set up your Donation Form to make all incoming records Group Sale Payments, payments from your form will already have the right record type.
What your Donation Form can't do is connect these Group Sale Payment records to the parent Group Sale records, since that requires some human intervention.
To connect incoming Group Sale Payments to their Group Sales, we recommend creating a report and subscribing to it for notifications of incoming Group Sale Payments.
1. From the Reports tab, create a New Report
2. Find and select Donations as the Report Type, then click Continue
3. In the Filters pane, adjust your filters
Set your filters to the following:
- Show Me: All donations
- Close Date: All Time
- Donation Status: Any
- Probability: All
-
Donation Record Type equals Group Sale Payment
- You'll use the lookup feature to select this
-
Parent Record equals ""
- Leave the field blank; we're looking for Group Sale Payment records that still need to be connected to a Parent Record
4. Adjust the fields in the Outline pane to see only the fields you need
The report will come with some pre-set columns. Here's our general recommendation on fields to include, and customize as you wish!
- Account Name
- Donation Name
- Donor
- Amount
- Created Date
- Any custom fields you added to your Donation Form; here we're using our Group Name field
5. Click Save & Run
6. Name and Save your report
We recommend giving this report a clear name and saving it to a folder that makes sense for your organization. Here we've saved it to a Group Sales folder we created.
Voila! Your report is ready!
Now, you have a report that you can subscribe to and get notifications if there are any Group Sale Payments that need to be connected to a Group Sale parent record.
Did a patron use your Donation Form to make a Group Sale Payment? Awesome! Here's how to connect it to the Group Sale record.
1. From the report, click into the Group Sale Payment record
2. Edit the Parent Record field
3. Use the lookup to search for and select the Group Sale parent
4. Click Save
Now the Group Sale Payment is attached to the Group Sale parent record
And if you go to the Group Sale, you'll see the Amount Paid is updated
And the Group Sale Payment is in the Payments Related List
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Great question! One of the best ways you can share your new Group Sale Payment Donation Form with your group sale patrons is by adding a link to the Donation Form into your Group Sales Invoice Classic Email Template.
This Classic Email Template can be found in the PatronTicket Email Templates folder in Setup, but the process for editing this Email Template will be more similar to a PatronDonate Email Template.
Depending on the volume of Group Sales you process, you may also consider linking to your Group Sale Payment Donation Form from a page on your website too.
Yes! Just like any other online donations, you will want to qualify these incoming records.