End of Year: Consolidated Canadian Receipts

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Consolidated Receipts for Canada webinar. Consolidated receipting is the process of combining multiple gift transactions into one receipt. In the case of the calendar year end, the transactions to be included on your consolidated receipts are those Read More

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Consolidated Receipts for Canada webinar. Consolidated receipting is the process of combining multiple gift transactions into one receipt. In the case of the calendar year end, the transactions to be included on your consolidated receipts are those that you’ve received from January 1st through December 31st of the prior calendar year that did not yet receive a charitable receipt number. In this webinar, we’ll be reviewing with you how to prep your data. You’ll learn how to run a series of cross-tabulation reports to verify your gifts have the right data entry values to be included on your end of year consolidated receipts. Once the data is prepped, then we’ll walk you through the process of how to update your letter and email templates to make sure that the templates reflect the previous calendar year. Ensure they have the up to date and current text you want to use to thank your donors, and ensure any logos, signature, charitable numbers are up to date and current. And then, lastly, we’ll teach you how to use the batch receiving tool to generate your consolidated receipts. All right, so let’s start with step number one: preparing the data. Why this step is important is because throughout the year, your data has been coming into DonorPerfect from perhaps a few different sources. You may have completed a mid-year transfer from one database to now using DonorPerfect. You or other staff members may have been manually inputting monthly donors or gifts into systems. Donations could have come into DonorPerfect through different donation forms, or you could be importing data from third-party sites like Canada Helps or Race Rosters. With that many sources, data entry errors are certainly bound to happen. So, what we recommend is running a series of cross-tabulation reports to validate that the receipt fields on your gift screen are set correctly, so that those gifts get included on your end-of-year consolidated tax receipt. Now, before we get started with showing you how to prep the data, I do want to give you a couple of recommendations of tasks you should complete before running these data cleanup reports. First of all, I would certainly recommend running a duplicate merge in your donor perfect system to make sure that there are any duplicate donors; those get merged together so that you generate one receipt to a singular donor. Second of all, I recommend if you haven’t generated all of your individual tax receipts yet, go into batch receipting and complete that task first. That way, those unreceipted individual gifts do not clutter up our data cleanup reports we’re about to run. So once you’ve merged your duplicates and once you’ve gone ahead and generated all of your individual tax receipts to remove them from our data cleanup reports, we can begin to prep the data. How I’m going to approach teaching you each report is that I’m going to open up a gift record in DonorPerfect and show you the end result of what the cleanup should achieve. Then I’ll take you into the report and show you the filters you need to apply, how to run the report with the filter, and how to start cleaning up the data. All right, let’s start with our first data cleanup report. What I’m going to do is navigate into DonorPerfect and show you a gift record that is already set up correctly to receive a consolidated receipt. So for the first data cleanup report. What we’re validating is that every gift that needs to be included on a consolidated receipt has the correct acknowledgement preference and the correct receipting preference assigned at the gift record. As a reminder for when we’re inputting donations into DonorPerfect, the acknowledgment preference field determines whether or not the gift will receive a charitable receipt number as part of the receipting process. All donations that need any receipt number, whether it’s individual or consolidated, must have an acknowledgement preference of acknowledge and receipt. Acknowledge and receipt in the acknowledgement preference will trigger the donor perfect database to generate a receipt number for this gift when it goes through the receipting process. Now, for consolidated receipts specifically, we also need to review the field receipting. Preference dash gift.

In order for DonorPerfect to take multiple gifts from the same donor record and consolidate them and put them on one tax receipt, in order for DonorPerfect to generate one single tax receipt number for multiple gifts, the receding preference dash gift must be set to consolidated. So our end goal in the first data cleanup report is to review the acknowledgment preference field and confirm all donations that need to be included on a consolidated receipt. Have the acknowledgment preference acknowledge and receipt. We also need to review the receipting preference dash gift field to confirm all donations that must be included on a consolidated receipt have the designation consolidated included on it. So at this point, if you’re following along to to repeat this in your own system, I recommend writing down on your notebook or on a piece of paper that we’re reviewing the acknowledgment preference field for acknowledge and receipt as the designation. We’re reviewing the receipting preference dash gift field in order to confirm that it’s consolidated. Alrighty. So to run the cross-tabulation report that we’re going to use to review this data, we are going to navigate in DonorPerfect to the navigation bar and select Reports. And from the drop-down box in Reports, we’re going to select Report Center. Once we’re in the Report Center, you’re going to navigate to the Financial Report folder on the left-hand side of the screen, and from the financial report folder, you’re going to look in the report name column until you find the report cross-tabulation. Once you locate the cross-tabulation report in the report center grid, you can click on the report name to open up the report. Now, before running the report, we do need to apply filters to this report to help DonorPerfect only show donations from last calendar year that have not yet been receipted. So the intention of the first cross-tabulation report is to isolate out all donations from the previous calendar year where no receipt number has been generated. If a receipt number has already been generated for a donation, we do not need to review those donations to be included on a consolidated receipt. So to achieve this filter, we’re going to look to the left-hand side of the screen in the box Options and Filters, and what we’re going to do is work our way from the top down to walk you through the process of how to set up the sidebar filter to run the first cross-tabulation report. To begin with, we’re going to go into the date range filter box, and we’re going to use our mouse and keyboard to delete the date ranges from this filter. We’re deleting the date ranges from this filter because we’re going to apply the date range using a selection filter. Step two, we’re going to go to the fields to show along the left and fields to show along the top dropdown box. This is where earlier I asked you to write down the fields acknowledgement preference and receding preference dash gift. We are now going to select in the field along the left that the data that we want to review and clean up along the left is going to be the acknowledgement preference field. In the parentheses, you’re going to look for dpgift dot acknowledgepref acknowledgement preference parentheses dpgift dot acknowledgment pref in the field along the top, we’re going to look for the Field receding preference dash gift parentheses dpg gift dot rcpt underscore type receding preference dash gift in the parentheses dpg gift dot. RCPT underscore type. The reason that I’m emphasizing what’s in the parentheses is that in some of your databases, those prompt names, acknowledgement preference and receding preference dash gift may be different than what’s in my system. However, the parentheses will be true and accurate across all databases. So, field along the left, we’re going to be selecting acknowledgment preference. Field along the top, we’ll be selecting receding preference dash gift. We do not want to include pledges in our end-of-year receding, we’re not going to apply a report heading, and we’re going to ignore the chart types. And we’re going to now navigate down to filters by gift. I always recommend before you run any sidebar report that you hit the eraser icon, clear values. What Clear Values does is it ensures if there are any filters in the sidebar fields like donor type or province, Clear Values will remove those filters.

The next step that we’re going to do is apply a selection filter. The selection filter is how, in DonorPerfect, we’re going to isolate, filter for, or query for all donations from the previous calendar year where a receipt number has not been generated. Now I do have the correct filter applied. Free processing one consolidated is the filter I do need in order to run this report. However, I want to teach you guys how to apply this filter and also build it on your own. So I’m going to click the X and click yes to remove my filter, and now it says no filter selected. So I can now hit apply, and apply will open up your selection filter window. Now, for those of you that are working in DonorPerfect, please look to the left-hand side of your screen to see if you have a folder called End-of-Year Receipt Filters. All newer Canadian databases should have a End of Year Receipt Filter folder, and you should have two filters include included in that folder, pre-processing one consolidated, processing consolidated. These are the two filters we’ll be using as part of your receipt setup. For those of you that have this filter already in your database, you’re going to locate filter 435, pre-pro. one consolidated, and to the far far far right, you’re going to click on the pencil icon to edit that filter. When you edit the filter, this is showing you the date range that the filter is looking for. So in my case, my filter is looking for donations between the beginning of 2025 and December 31st of 2025, and we’re looking for donations in that time period where the receipt number field is null or blank. Now, what I need to do because I am generating these receipts in 2027, so I want to receipt all donations from 2026. What I can do is take my mouse and cursor and click into the line DP gift date, and with my mouse and cursor, I can update the date range by just saying I now want to review donations received between January 1st of 2026 and December 31st of 2026. So every single year you do consolidated receipts, you do have to update the year in your selection filter to look for all donations received in the previous calendar year. So, if I’m in 2027, I want to update this filter to be 2026. If I am in 2028, I want to update this filter to be 2027. Also, can that the combine with criteria is set to and, as we are looking for all donations where the date range was made in 2026, and the receipt number field is empty, blank, or null. You’re ready. You can click Done to apply that filter to your report, and from this step here, you can click Run Report, and this is going to then run the report and give you your desired output. Now, before I actually talk through the report, I do want to show how to build this free processing one consolidated filter from scratch for those of you that may not have this filter in your database, or for those of you that may have a filter in your database but it doesn’t match the one that I’m teaching you today. So very quickly, I’m going to click the X to remove the pre-processing one consolidated filter. I’m going to click Apply next to No filter selected, and in my selection filter window, I’m going to click Add New Filter, and to build the filter, in step number one, select Screen Table. We’ll select the Gift Pledge Data Entry table. In step two, we’re going to click the date of gift field. In step three, you’re going to click the comparison operator between, and in step four, you’re going to enter the date range for the previous calendar year. In our case, we’re going to do January 1st of 2026 through December 31st of 2026. So, as a repeat, gift pledge data entry table field is date of gift, comparison operator is between. Step four values are January 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2026. Then we’re going to click the button “Add More Criteria” to add this filter criteria to our filter. To build the second part of the filter, identify all of the records where the receipt number field is blank.

In step number one, we’re going to click the data entry table gift pledge. In step number two, select fields to compare. We’re going to change the display from favorite fields to all fields to see every field on the gift entry table, and we’re going to find the field receipt number. In step number three, you’re going to select the comparison operator is blank or is null. So again, data entry table is gift pledge. Step number two, select field to compare. You’ll change your display to all fields. Select the field receipt number. In step number three, comparison operator, we’re selecting the comparison operator is blank or is null. Then I can click Add More Criteria to add that to my filter. Once I have my date range and I have the criteria receipt number is blank or null, I can click Continue in the bottom right-hand Corner, we will combine the criteria for this filter as an and combine, and then so you don’t have to repeat this process next year, you are going to save this filter as pre-processing consolidated one. This way, your filter will match the documentation in this webinar as well as any of our knowledge base resources. If you have a filter folder called End of Year Receipt Filters, please save that filter in that folder. If you do not have a filter folder called End of Year Receipt Filters, you can click the Add New Filter Folder button to create a new folder for these filters. I also recommend clicking the Share Across All Users checkbox to ensure that other users can use this filter in case you would like to offload this task onto another staff member next year. Last, you’re going to click Done to apply the filter, and then we’re going to run our report. Oop! And sometimes we get unexpected errors, so you can just click Run Report again. Now, what I’m going to do in my sidebar is I’m going to click the hide button to hide the sidebar so I can get the full report. Okay, so this is a lot of information to take in, but let me point you to where our end goal is. Our end goal is we want to look at the acknowledge and receipt row and the consolidated column. We want to confirm that any donor who needs a consolidated tax receipt is included in the cell where currently you see the number 116. These are all of the donations where the acknowledge preference is acknowledge and receipt, and the receipting preference is consolidated. So our end goal is to make sure that anybody who needs to be included on a consolidated receipt is included in this cell here. What this means is that we need to now go through all of the other cells where you see numbers linked, and we need to review these data to confirm if we need to move these donations into the consolidated and consolidated and receded cell. So for this first group that we’re going to review, the two donations that are $100, these donations have an acknowledgement preference of acknowledge and receipt. However, they do not have a receding preference. We don’t know if these should be individual receipts or consolidated receipts. So we need to review these two donations to confirm: Am I adding them to the consolidated group or the individual group. To do this, I’m going to click on the number two to drill into the segment. These are two $50 donations from Bob Johnson. If I need to review these donations in more detail to confirm if these should be included on a consolidated receipt, I can click on the gift amount in the fourth column from the right, right-click with my mouse, and select Open a link in a new tab. Right-click on the gift amount, open link in new tab. What that does is it keeps the report open in my web browser while opening up a new tab for me to look at Bob’s donations, and I can look at Bob’s gift record and see through solicitation this is a monthly gift through credit card. He has the correct acknowledgement preference. What I need to fix is his missing receding preference. I need to come in and assign that to consolidated. And once I make that correction, I can click the save button on the gift record to save the changes.

And now I can go back to the report, and I can repeat the same process with his second donation. Right-click on the gift record, open link in new tab, and I can review this $50 donation and look at the gift entry information and confirm this gift should be included on a consolidated receipt. What I need to fix is the receipting preference, which is blank, and I’m going to now toggle this to consolidated, and then save my gift. Once I’ve cleaned up that data, I can click the refresh button in my web browser to reload the report. And now those gifts have left the drill down. I can close the tab in my web browser where the drill down is in. Come back into the report and click the show button to open up my sidebar and rerun the report. What we should see is that these two donations that were missing a consolidated designation, these two donations should now move into my consolidated receipt segment. So I should see my consolidated receipt segment go from 18 gifts to. I should see my consolidated receipts. Segment go from 16 donations to 18 donations. So when I click Run Report to rerun the report, there’s that magic. Alrighty. So then the next group that I’m going to take a look at are these two donations here? These two donations are missing an acknowledgment preference. There is no way in the system for me to know should these donations get a tax receipt, should these donations get an acknowledgement no receipt, should these donations be included in the do not acknowledge, do not receipt segment. So these donations were marked to be consolidated. They are in the consolidated column, but these two donations do not have an acknowledgement preference. So to clean this data up again, I’m going to click on the two and drill into the details, and for Alice Smith, I’m going to right-click on her gift amount, open link in a new tab, and again I’m looking at her receipting information. She is a monthly donor. Her acknowledgement preference is blank, so I’m going to mark her as acknowledge and receipt. I can also fix her thank you letter code if I’m here already, and I know that Alice is a French speaker, so I’m going to assign her my 99F French letter, and then I can hit save. I can close the gift list tab and go to Bob Johnson. Right-click on his $50 gift, open link in new tab. And again, I’m looking at my gift information. This is a monthly donor who is missing their acknowledgment preference, so I’m going to assign the correct acknowledgement preference, acknowledge and receive, and hit save. And then I can close out the gift tab. I can reload my page to see that Allison and Bob have been removed from the drill down. So I can close the drill down. What I should now see is that these two donations that I just fixed should move into the acknowledge and receipt consolidated segment. So I should go from 18 donations to now 20 donations. So when I run my report, there we go. We’re going to see that my acknowledgement and receipt segment has been fixed. So with every click that I go through, I’m essentially coming in and cleaning up my data. So then the next group I can review are anybody who is a consolidated donor, but they have the acknowledgement preference of do not acknowledge, do not receipt. I have 36 donations that are in this group. These 36 donations will not get included on a consolidated receipt unless I fix their data. So what I can do is look at White Karen, right-click on her gift record, open a link in a new tab. Oh, okay. This is a perfect example of Karen is a Canada Helps donor. Canada Helps donations will not be receipted by DonorPerfect because Canada Helps will receive the monthly donors for you. So in this case, Karen’s data entry is correct because she is marked “Do not acknowledge, do not receipt. She will not be receiving a tax receipt from DonorPerfect. And I will clue you in to say that all of these donors-I looked at these ahead of time-are all Canada Helps donors.

So if you have Canada Helps donors that are in the database as do not acknowledge, do not receipt, you do not need to fix their data because we are now saying do not include them on a receipt. The last segment that I’m going to take a look at is my individual column. What I want to do is review to see if any of these donations that are included in this individual segment should be included on a. Validated receipt segment. These are most likely going to be donations that were acknowledged but not receipted because these were gifts that were not meant to be a tax receivable gift. These could be donations that were inputted that were never intended to get a tax receipt. So individual do not acknowledge, do not receipt. There could also be donations in the acknowledge and receipt column that were marked individual, but should have been included on a consolidated receipt. So essentially, you want to go through the individual column, and you want to look at these donations to make a determination. Should this donation be included on a consolidated tax receipt or not? And you can update the data accordingly. So the end result is that when you finally have all of your data cleaned up, you’ve reviewed every segment except your acknowledge and receipt consolidated group. The last thing you want to do before you complete this report is to go into your acknowledge and receipt Consolidated group, and sort the data by the donor name, and just go through and review the list to see if there’s any donations in this list that you feel should not be included on a consolidated receipt. So you’re really looking to see if there’s anybody that you need to adjust the data entry to remove them from the list. When you get to the bottom of the report summary, what’s super helpful here is that it’s going to tell you how many donors are included on the list. So write this donor number down because this is how many tax receipts you will be generating when we finally generate our receipts. So I have 120 donations that are going to be receipted, but those 120 donations are tied to 10 unique donors. So I’m going to be receiving 10 unique gifts. Alrighty. So once you’ve completed that task, you have now completed the first of three data cleanup reports. So let’s take a pause here in case you need to go and clean up your data. So complete the work on this first data cleanup report, and once you’re ready, you can come back to the webinar and you can continue on to the second data cleanup report. Alrighty. So now that you’ve completed the work on cleaning up the data in the first data cleanup report, we are going to talk about how to clean up the data for the second data cleanup report. So for the second data cleanup report, this is all about how the receipt will get delivered, whether the receipt will be delivered via email or via letter. There are two data entry values that we’re reviewing here. The first data entry value that we’re reviewing is on the main data entry screen. On the main data entry table, every single donor has a field called receipt delivery. This is the default preference for how the donor likes to receive their tax receipts, either via email or via letter. So every donor has a default receipt delivery preference on the main data entry table. However, on the gift data entry table, every single donation Also has a receding preference, receipt delivery preference dash gift. Our goal with the second data cleanup report is to confirm that the main page delivery preference matches the delivery preference on every gift record going on the consolidated receipt. Another way to think about this is if on the main screen a donor’s receipt preference is email, all of their gifts should be email receipt delivery. If a donor is marked to get letter receipts on the main screen. All of their gifts should have the receipt delivery preference of letter.

Why this matters is that it keeps a donor from getting their receipt in two different formats, and keeps their receipt numbers from being split across two delivery methods, which could cause the donor to receive a receipt with an incorrect total, so we’re going to go back to reports and report center to run our second data cleanup report. Reports report center. We’re going to go to the financial report folder on the left-hand side of the screen, and then we’re going to select our cross-tabulation report. Now, for the cross-tabulation report, again, we’re going to look to the left-hand side of the screen, options and filters, and we’re going to walk you through how to clean up this filter. We’re going to walk you through how to set up the sidebar report to get the correct data out. First step is we’re going to delete the date range from the sidebar filter because our filter date range will be in our selection filter. Our field along the left of the report is going to be the field receipt delivery (parentheses DP dot receipt underscore delivery. That is the receipt delivery preference on the main screen. The field along the top is going to be receipt delivery preference dash gift dp gift dot receipt underscore delivery underscore G. We will not include pledges, and we’re not going to apply a report heading or work with charts. In filters by gift, we’re going to click Clear Values to remove our any sidebar filters. Now, again, for those of you that have the system end of your filters already created for you, you’re going to click the X button to remove pre-processing consolidated one. We no longer need this filter. Instead, when we click Apply Filter, we are going to be using in the end of year receipt filter folder the filter called Processing consolidated filter 437 processing consolidated. This is the filter you’re going to use moving forward for all of the rest of the consolidated receipt process. The reason that we’re using the processing consolidated filter, if we click on the pencil icon to edit the filter. This filter is going to look for all donations where the receipt number field is blank. It’s also going to look for all donations where the date range of the gift is between the beginning of January of the previous year and the end of December of the previous year. So just like we did with the last filter, we’re going to update the date of gift filter here with our mouse and cursor and keyboard to, in our case, be January 1st of 2026, December 31st of 2026. So the first part of this filter is exactly like the pre-processing one filter we were just looking at. All donations last year were no receipt number is issued. What we’re now doing with this filter is we are isolating the data down further, and we’re saying only include the donations if they are marked to get a consolidated receipt, and they have an acknowledgement preference of acknowledge and receipt. So the second part of the filter is basically isolating out all the donations that we cleaned up and confirmed from the last report. In my case, it was those 10 receipts, those 120 donations, that were making up 10 receipts that this filter is now going to pull for me. So, for those of you that have the processing consolidated filter that have gone ahead and updated the date range, you can click done, and then run report to run your report and continue on to the data cleanup. For those of you that do not have the processing consolidated filter as part of your report setup, let me teach you how to build that filter. To build that filter, you’re going to click Apply, and you’re going to add a new filter. And step number one to get the date of gift, we’re going to do gift pledge. Step number two, date of gift, is between January 1st of 2026 through December 31st of 2026, or depending on if you’re doing this later on in a different year, the date range will of course be the previous calendar year. Add more criteria. The second part of the filter is to identify all gifts that have a missing receipt number or have not been receipted. In step number one, we’ll choose gift pledge.

In step number two, field to compare, we’re going to select all fields. Then, from the drop-down box, we’re going to find the field receipt number. Our comparison operator is the is blank is null comparison operator. Look for all donations where the receipt number field is empty. Then click Add more criteria to add that to our filter. The third part of our filter is we want to identify all donations that are set with the acknowledgment preference of acknowledge and receipt. Step number one is gift pledge data entry table. Step number two is acknowledgement preference as our field of choice. Step number three, we’re going to select the equal to or exact match comparison operator, and then step number four, you’re going to click the button Look up Codes, and from the pop-up window, you’re going to click in the first column on the blue hyperlinked text 1AR, which is the code name for acknowledge and receipt. Then click Add more criteria to add that to our filter. Our last step is going to be identifying all donations that are marked to get a consolidated receipt. Step number one is to select the data entry table gift and pledge. Step number two in our fields, we’re going to look for the field receiving preference dash gift. Step number three is to select the comparison operator equal to. In step number four, you’re going to click lookup code, and you’re going to select the code in the first column on the left hand side, C C for consolidated, and then click the Add More Criteria button to add that criteria to our filter. Once you have the date range, the receipt number, the acknowledgment preference, and the receipt type, you can click the continue button on the right-hand side of the pop-up window. We will combine the criteria as an and combine, and then we’re going to save the filter with the name processing consolidated Processing consolidated will match all of the documentation for this webinar, as well as any knowledge base articles, and our support team will be familiar with this filter. You’re going to save that in your end-of-year receipt filter folder and turn on share across all users before clicking done to apply the filter. When you click Run Report, what we’re seeing in this report are the assigned preference for receipt delivery at the main level that makes up the row. As well as the assigned receipt delivery preference at the gift level, that makes up the columns. In an ideal report, what we’re going to see is in the email row and the email column. These are the number of gifts that are set to get an email tax receipt. The donations that are in the letter row and the letter column are the donations that are set to get a letter tax receipt. What we need to review is: Are there any donations or any dollar amounts that are in the letter row but email column. This indicates that the donor has a letter delivery preference on the main screen, but an email delivery preference on the gift record. We also want to see if there is a number in the email row or the letter column, because this indicates that the donor has a receipt delivery preference of email on the main but letter at the gift. So, if on the diagonal you see any kind of number that’s not zero, those donations need to be reviewed and cleaned up to ensure that all donors that are email on the main have email assigned at their gift level. All donors who are letter on the main have letter at the gift level. This is to ensure that each donor receives a single tax receipt and a single delivery method, and to ensure that the gift total counts are correct on the receipt. So to clean up the data, what we’re going to start off with is the donations that are letter on the main, but email at the gift level. To clean up the data, like what we’ve been doing so far, we’re going to click on the one to drill down into the gift record. We’re going to right-click on the gift amount column, the fourth column from the right, and open link in a new tab.

And for this donor’s gift, because he is letter on the main, we are going to change his receipt delivery preference from email to letter, and then click the save button in the top right-hand corner to save the gift. Once the change is made, we can close the gift list column in our web browser. We can close the drill down, and we can run our report again. And what we should see, what we should see when we run this report is that this one should now move to the letter letter column and row. Perfect. So it went from one to zero, and letter letter went from 47 to 48. We’re going to repeat this exact same process for the donor that is email on the main screen, but letter at the gift level by clicking on the one to drill down into the details, right-clicking and opening a link in a new tab to review the gift record, and we’re going to change the receipt delivery preference from letter to email to have alignment between the main and the gift screen. Once the change is made, we can click Save to save the gift. We can close the Gift tab. We can close the Drill Down tab, and we can run the report. And when we run the report, we should see this one move over to 71. So just by rerunning the report, we’re able to now see that the zero went over to here. So there’s email on the main email on the gift. Now we have a report where our receipt delivery on the main screens are aligned with each other, and at this point, if you would like to get a count, if you would like to know how many email receipts am I generating compared to how many letter receipts I’m generating, we can click on the email cell to drill down into the records, and at the bottom of the report, we can see the total donor number. So at the bottom of the report, we have our grid summary total donor. Is six, which means that I’m going to generate six email receipts, six email receipts that are made up of 72 donations. Again, I can go into my web browser and I can close the tab, and I can repeat the exact same process with my letters. 48 gifts that are set to get letters. If I go down to the bottom of my page in the summary, I am going to be generating four letter receipts for 48 gifts. Okay, so at this point, if your organization sends the exact same letter or the exact same email to all of your constituents. Every constituent, regardless if it’s email or letter, gets the exact same thank you message. You can now proceed to the next part of the webinar, which will teach you how to then update your letter and email templates in DonorPerfect. if your organization sends a different letter or email template to your donor based off of specific criteria, a very common example is we have a French letter and we have an English letter, or we send our monthly donors a different letter compared to our regular one-time donors. If there is any situation where your organization has a different thank you letter that you send to different donors based off a criteria, you need to run one more additional report. So for those of you that are sending the same letter to everybody, the same letter and email to everybody, you can proceed to the next part of the webinar to learn how to update your template. For those of you that have different letters based off of language, based off the donor’s giving pattern, we’re going to now talk about the third data entry report. Alrighty. So then, for the third data cleanup report, this is to review the assigned thank you letter code for each donor. When we go to generate our receipts, the receipts are going to be generated based off the assigned thank you letter code. So if every donor gets the exact same letter or email sent to them, we don’t need to run this report. If you are sending a different letter, one to your English-speaking donors and one to your French-speaking donors, we have to run this report to ensure that each donor is included in the correct letter segment.

English speakers will get our English-speaking letter. French speakers will get our French-speaking ladder. So let’s talk about how we set up the sidebar filter to accommodate this report. For this report, what we’re going to change is going to be, pardon me, the field that we’re going to show along the top. We’re going to change this field to look for a field called Thank You Letter, DP Gift dot T Y underscore Letter Underscore Number. We’re going to keep our selection filter as processing consolidated, as we are still reviewing the exact same 120 donations that we validated need a consolidated receipt. Now we can run our report, and what I can see when I run the output of the report is that the columns of the report are telling me what the assigned thank you letter code is. So I have one column of donors where no thank you letter is assigned. So I need to fix these and assign them a thank you letter. I have one group of donors that are assigned my standard thank you letter. This needs to be corrected because they need a consolidated receipt. So I need to change this code from a individual receipt code to a consolidated receipt code. The 99E column is representing all of my donors. Who are getting an English letter, and my 99F column are representing my donors who are getting the French letter. So 99E, 99F, those are correct. Those are the donors who have the correct gift codes. For the ones that I need to clean up, again, we’re going to follow the data cleanup process that we have been doing for all of these reports. Clicking into the drill down, right-clicking on the gift amount, the fourth column from the right, open link in new tab, and on the gift level, this donation does not have a thank you letter assigned to them. I happen to know that Allison is a French speaker for my organization, so I’m going to assign her the French-speaking letter, and then I can hit save. I can close the gift list tab, close the drill down tab, and rerun the report again. That donation that did not have a thank you letter code has now moved to the 99F column. So we’re going to repeat the exact same process for the donation that has an individual receipt, and we’re going to do our drill down. Open link in new tab. Oh, and this is Alice Smith again, so we’re going to assign her the 99F letter. So we’re going to close all of our extra tabs and rerun our report. All right, and this is exactly what we want to see. These are all of our donors who are going to be getting an English letter, compared to all of our donors who are going to be getting a French letter. And again, if we want to get the details, well, how many people are getting the English email versus the English letter? We can click into the drill down, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen, and in the summary, our total donor count is four. So I have four donors who are getting the English email. If I click into the drill down under English letter and scroll down to the bottom of the screen, I have four donors who are getting the English letter. If I want to see how many people are getting the French communication, I have nobody who is getting the French letter. But if I click on the 35 to look at my French email, I have three donors who are getting the French email? Alrighty. Once you’ve done running this report, you are done doing all of your data cleanup reports. Now, what we can do is we can move on to talking about how to update your letter and receipt templates. All right, welcome to step two of end of year consolidated receipting for Canada. Step number two is where we review updating your letter and email templates. Cleaning your data is only half the job. Every year, you need to review both your letter and your email templates to ensure that the calendar year on the tax receipt is correct.

This is also your opportunity to review the messaging that you’re using to thank your donors and express gratitude for your monthly donors who are perhaps giving to your organization year after year, month after month. They may recognize if last year’s message is the exact same as this year’s message. So this is your opportunity to refresh how you’re expressing gratitude to your donors, connect them to the mission and the impact that their donations have had. So let’s dive into DonorPerfect and let’s take a look at how we update your email and letter templates. So for email and letter templates, those will be updated separate from each other. We’re going to start with updating the email templates. To update the email templates, we’re going to navigate to the mailings icon in the navigation bar, and from the mailings icon, we’re going to select from the second option from the top email. Templates. Nope, I don’t need to worry about saving my filters. Now, for organizations that have more than one template that they’re using for end-of-year receding, for example, I have an English and a French letter. You are going to repeat this process for each template you’re using in the consolidated receipt process. For the purposes of this webinar, I’m only going to show how to update one of these templates. Just keep in mind, if you have a English and a French template, you will want to do these changes or apply these changes to each template. So to edit a template, you click on the pencil icon in the first column of the grid, which opens up the email template for you to review. The email template is made up of your email template, which is the messaging and how we’re expressing gratitude, and the PDF attachment, which is the tax receipt. Let’s look at the PDF attachment first, since this is the official charitable document. By clicking on PDF attachment, you’re able to preview your official tax receipt. The big thing that we want to review for the tax receipt is the year of donation, as this needs to be updated to reflect the previous calendar year. This is also a good opportunity if you need to update the signature or any of your organization’s contact information or logo. Take those moments now to apply those changes. Once the changes are done, over on the right-hand side of the screen, you’ll click the Save Template button. Once we’ve updated the PDF attachment, we also want to review the email template as this is how we’re going to express gratitude. As we look at the email template, one thing to also confirm is that you have a BCC set for these emails. This way, you get a copy of all consolidated receipts that are sent out through DonorPerfect. Further down in the email, you can read through the thank you message to confirm that this is the text you want to use to thank your donors. Keep an eye out if you have any year-specific data in that template, as this will have to be updated every single year. For email receipts, because we do not have to worry about printing cost, many organizations like to include a gift grid as a way to show the donor the breakdown of the gifts that they’ve received. If you would like to include this gift grid, but it’s not currently in your email template, the way you can insert the gift grid is to click Insert Merge Field. You’re going to scroll down in the Merge Field box until you can find the words functions, and you’ll click on the caret icon to open up your functions. And what you’re going to pull in is what’s called the consolidated gift list. That is then going to insert a grid with up to five pieces of data that you can incorporate into your email. In my case, I’m going to make prompt one gift date. Prompt two, the description. So this will be my solicitation code or my general ledger. Prompt three is my amount, and I can use the formatting tools in the email to format these to be bolded. Prompt four could be something like type of gift if I want to include the payment method for the donor. And prompt five, I see many people will put the reference or check field. Now, are you required to have all five columns of data?

Absolutely not. If you only want three columns of data-gift date, description, amount-you can click on the column headers for the columns you want to delete, and that will open up a pop-up window for you to select column, delete column. Column, delete column. So you by no means are required to use the grid. You by no means are required to and use all five columns of data. This is just here as an opportunity. To give your donor a bit more insight into the gifts that they gave. Now, one thing to note is just because you put the word gift date description amount in the column header does not mean that DonorPerfect will know to put the gift date in the rows, the amount in the row or in the solicitation code in the row. Gift list 1f, gift list one f2, gift list one f3, all have to be mapped. The way you complete this mapping: first, let’s save your template. Once the template is saved, if you want to do your mapping, navigate to the settings icon in the top right corner. Select parameters. From parameters, you’re going to look to the left-hand side of the screen and select Acknowledgments and Receipts. And from Acknowledgments and Receipts, you’re going to scroll down till you find the grid consolidated receipt gift list. Position one refers to the data you want in the first column. I have gift date. Position two refers to the data in the second column. I have solicitation code, and position three refers to the data in the third column, which I have amount. I also see I have fair market value and reference mapped because these are not included in my actual template, I don’t have to remove them. They just won’t be merged. For solicitation code, because this is a coded field, this is a drop-down box. I’m choosing to display the code description. I’m choosing to display the code description, so it says monthly giving, annual appeal, end of year letter. Whereas if I left it as no and I displayed the code, my code would say M M A A E O Y. So the description is a much more donor-friendly text to include in your thank you. To save our change, we’re going to click Save, and this will save your mapping. Okay. Now, if you have more than one email template, just go ahead right now and update your remaining email templates. And when you’re ready, we’re going to move over and talk about how to update your letter templates. So for letter templates, those are going to be updated underneath the same mailings icon in the navigation bar, but mailing templates are going to live underneath the function mail merge templates, I always like to remind people that mail merge templates is basically like a Google Drive inside of DonorPerfect. We are hosting Word documents that you use as part of your receiving process in the DonorPerfect system. So when we go to your receipts folder to find the receipt template that you need to update, we’re going to take the receipt template that needs to be updated and click on the downward gray arrow next to that template to download it to a Word document. So basically, if you know how to edit data in Word, you can update your email templates. You can update your letter templates super quick. So just like what we did with the letter, we want to assess the messaging to see if any of this needs to be updated or changed, but more importantly, we need to look at the official donation receipt section, and we need to identify the date of donation received and update that to be the previous calendar year. Once you’ve reviewed the email template and confirmed the date of donation received is the previous calendar year, once you’ve made any updates to the language or any updates to logos or contact information, you can save this Word document on your desktop. And what we’re going to do is we are going to replace the Word document that we’re already hosting in DonorPerfect with the newest version. We are not going to upload a new template because what that means is that you will. End up having 234, or five variations of the same template in your database. We truly just want to keep the most current template in the database and not old versions.

So to replace what we have in the database, we’re going to click on the pencil icon in the first column to the left of the screen. In the pop-up window, we’re going to see the name of the Word document that is currently hosted in DonorPerfect. We’ll click on the Change button to change. You’ll locate the new document on your desktop, Select it, and then you’re going to click the update button, and that will update and replace the document that was in DonorPerfect with the new document. Now, if you have more than one template, I have a 99 French template. I would repeat this exact same process for my French letters. So go ahead, take a pause, work on updating your email and your letter templates. Once you are done updating your templates, we are ready to move on to the final step, which is generating your receipts. Alrighty, welcome back. So now that we’ve run our data cleanup reports, and now that we’ve updated our letter and email templates, we are ready to get to the most important step: step three, generating receipts. All consolidated receipts must go through the batch receipting tool in the navigation icon. If you’ve ever done individual receipts through batch receipting before, this is going to be a very similar process to how you generate your individual receipts. If this is the first time you’ve ever touched batch receipting. Don’t worry, we’re going to walk you through how to make the right decisions. So, when we are ready to generate our receipts, first step is to navigate in the navigation bar to the receipts icon. Once we’re in the receipts icon, we’re simply going to follow the bold headers to run our receipts. Step number one is going to be to set our receipt filter options. We will always leave email and letters selected to ensure that, regardless of the delivery methods that we have, all donors are being included in our receipt process. Don’t worry about clicking annual consolidated email. This is not for Canadian clients. This is how our U.S. clients do their end of year receiving. Once email and letter are both selected, click on the drop-down box “Show More Options. To generate our consolidated receipts, the transaction type is set to all transactions, which allows you to receipt all gifts regardless of who did the data entry, so all transactions means you can receive any Give Cloud donations, any donations that were entered by other staff members. Receding preference will be set to consolidated, in order to tell Donor Perfect that we want to generate one receipt one receipt number per donor. Selected date range we will leave unchecked because our date range will be in our select selection filter. We’ll leave current batch checked in case there are any consolidated donations that have not yet been put into a receipt batch. Now, if you are updating your receipt batch throughout the year, we also want to click Include Already Processed Gifts. Include already processed gifts means that we want to pull any consolidated donations that may have been acknowledged but not receipted, or any consolidated donations that have not been received or acknowledged, but have been put into a receipt batch. So essentially, click current batch, click include already processed gifts to ensure all donations that should be included on a consolidated receipt are represented. Lastly, we’re going to click no selection filter selected, and we’re going to hit apply, and that’s going to open up our selection filter window, where we’re going to go to our end of year receipt filter folder, and we’re going to select our processing consolidated filter. Now, for those of you that are only generating one letter and one email template for all donors, everybody is getting the exact same message. The only difference is, do they get it via email? Do they get it via letter? You will keep the processing consolidated filter exactly as it is, and then proceed to click Generate Receipts to generate your receipts. For the organizations that are generating a thank you letter that is different, so some donors are getting an English letter and some donors are getting a French letter. Please click on the edit button next to the filter because you need to then apply a filter to say I want to generate my email receipts first.

You’re going to generate all of your email receipts first for English, and then we’re going to repeat the process to do your French letters. So when we have more than one template that we are using, we do have to make sure that we generate each of those template types separate from each other. So again, this is only if the messaging and the language is different. So to apply this filter, we’re going to add more criteria to our filter. We’re going to select in step one data entry table is gift pledge. Step two: select field to compare is thank you letter T Y underscore letter underscore N O. Step three is our equal to comparison operator, and step four we’re going to look up our code, and you’re going to select the first thank you letter code that you want to generate. Mine is 99e. I’m going to click Add More Criteria to add that to my filter, and then hit Continue, and done to apply my filter. So again, that step is only necessary if you are going to be sending a different message to donors based off the language or based off another criteria. If your message for email and letter is exactly the same, you do not need to adjust the filter in the way that I did. Now this next step applies to everyone, which is we are now ready to generate our receipts. So we’re going to click on the button “Generate Receipts” at the bottom of the screen, and we always start with our email receipts first. I’m doing my English email donors. When I ran my report. I wrote down that I had four donors who were going to be getting email receipts for the English template, and my report here is supporting four donors. 37 gifts are getting an email receipt. I’m going to look to the left-hand side of the screen, where the drop-down box for email template says “No template assigned, I’m going to click in the drop-down box to now select my English template. This is really the crux of why we can’t generate English and French at the same time: is that the consolidated receipt process only allows you to choose one template from the drop-down box. When I’m ready, I’m going to click the next preview email receipt button, which is located at the top and bottom of the screen. Both buttons will take you to the next screen, and now I have the opportunity to review my email templates before they go out, so I can confirm every donor has a salutation. I can confirm their consolidated receipt total is $600. I can look at their gift grid to see all of their gifts listed out, including the solicitation code description. And at the bottom, I get to preview what the tax receipt will look like. Now, keep in mind that when you are generating your receipts, the receipt number and the receipt date do not appear in the preview, and that is because the actual receipt number and actual receipt date will be populated when you click send email receipts. So because this is a preview that you are conducting before you actually click send. The receipt number and receipt date do not get generated until you actually send your email receipts. Depending on the number of email receipts that you have, I have four. I can use the next and last button to spot check additional Templates. When I’m ready to send my email receipts, I’m going to go to the bottom of the screen and click Next Send Email Receipts. It’ll give me a pop-up window that’s telling you please review your receipts before you send them. It’s also telling you that any records that have a missing email address will not receive their email receipt. You also will get a confirmation email once the receipts are sent. So then, last step here is to click Send Email Receipts Now. Now we’re going to move to our letter templates. For my letter templates, I’m looking at the records column all the way on the far right. I have four letter templates for my English-speaking donors. I wrote down from my report I was going to generate four letters for email or for English, so this is correct. Okay. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to confirm that the export template is set to one consolidated receipt.

This is very important. If the export template is not one consolidated receipt, then that means that the receipt information will not populate with the gift total. So please confirm in the drop-down box that you have the export template one consolidated receipt. If you do not have a one consolidated receipt template. Please reach out to the support team and have them add this to your system. Next step is to click instant merge. Instant merge is how we’re going to merge the data. We’re going to take the data from the consolidated receipt export template, and we’re going to merge it into your letter of choice. So again, the system only lets me choose one letter at a time, which is why if you have more than one template type that you’re sending, we have to do English and French separate. So I’m going to choose 99e consolidated. I’m going to use my data from DonorPerfect, and I’m going to click merge. And what that will do then is that is going to download me a Word document that will have all of my English receipt templates listed out for me. So there are my address blocks, there are my salutations, the gift total, and the receipt information. So because these are letters, I can look at them. I can make minor tweaks and add text or remove text, and then I can print these out and send these off to my donors. Now, if you are only generating one template for all of your donors, great-you can click the done button, and you can be done your receiving process. Now, for those of you that have more than one template, for example, those of you that have an English-speaking template and a French-speaking template, you now will want to take the step to generate the next template group. So again, to set up our database so that you can generate the next group, types of receipt to send are email and letter. Transaction type is all transactions. Receding preference is set to consolidated. Current batch is checked. Include already processed gifts is checked, and you’re going to click where it says no selection filter selected. You’re going to hit apply. We’re going to go to our end of year receipt filter folder, and you’re going to edit the processing consolidated filter. So for me, my edit is very simple because I know that the thank you letter code for 99e. The only difference for French is that it’s 99F. So I can use my mouse and keyboard to update the code if I know what the code is. If you’re not sure what your thank you letter code is for your second letter, delete the thank you letter line on the report, click Add More Criteria, and then we’re going to build our selection filter. Step one is Gift Pledge. Step two, our field is Thank You Letter, D Y underscore Letter underscore no. Step three is the equal to comparison operator, and step four is to look up our code for 99 consolidated French 99F. Add more criteria to add it to our filter, and then click Continue, and click Done to apply your filter. You can then go to the bottom of the screen and click Generate Receipts. And I have three donors who are getting the French email. I’m going to look over to the left-hand side of the screen. You’re going to look over to the right-hand side of the screen and select 99F. Click Next Preview Email Receipts. You’re going to take a quick look at all of the email receipts before you send Them and then click Next. Send email receipts. Send email receipts now. Now I don’t have any French letters, but if I did have letters, you would repeat the exact same process that you did in the first group. And now, what you can do is you can celebrate, you can be excited because now your consolidated receipts are done, and you don’t have to think about them again until next calendar year. Let’s do our quick little recap here. So, for our recap, you want to use the cross-tabulation report and selection filters to review and clean up your data. This is because you are inputting data throughout a 12-month period, and there’s a lot of room for error to have come in.

Or you may have completed a mid-year transfer where you were moving data from one system to DonorPerfect. So for so for sure, there will probably be some data that has to be cleaned up. You need to update your letter and email templates every year to confirm that the year on the tax receipt is the previous calendar year period. And consolidated receipts can only be generated through the batch receipting tool. And then you want to repeat the receding process multiple times if you’re generating more than one template. So thank you guys so much for taking the time out of your day to watch this webinar. We hope that this is very helpful in getting you started or having you complete the entire receiving process on your own. If you need any assistance or guidance on the receiving process, our support team is willing and able to help guide you on how to clean up your data. While the support team will not clean up data for you, while the support team will not generate your receipts for you, they are certainly going to be willing to partner with you to give you the guidance on how’s the best on what the best approach for cleanup and generation will be. Thank you guys so much for attending this webinar, and we hope to see you in some future learning opportunities. Bye now.