Processing Online Gifts

Overview

There are multiple ways to process online gifts. This article highlights these options while including helpful details about receiving online gifts and ensuring that they are associated with the correct donors. The goal of this article is to help you and your team create workflows to make processing online gifts easier and more straightforward.

Accessing Pending Online Gifts

Gifts made from an Online Giving Form are automatically assigned a status of “Pending” to allow schools time to review the gifts and match them to people in the database before creating pledge or donation records. These pending gift records are different than the actual gift record which are created once the gift status is switched from “Pending” to “Create Gift.”

Below are a few ways to access pending online gifts for processing:

• Pending Gifts Tab on Online Giving Form Record
  A tab located on the Online Giving Form detail screen displaying a list of all pending online gifts made using that particular form. There are separate tabs on the Online Giving Form record that allow you to see gifts that have already been processed.
• Pending Online Gifts Report
  A report located under the Today section on the Development homepage displaying a list of all online gifts that have a status of “Pending.”
• Recent Online Gifts Query
  The Recent Online Gifts query can be found in the General section of the Development homepage. This query provides a list of both pending and processed (denoted as “Completed”) online gifts.
  Note that this is not the “Recent Gifts” report located in the Reports section of the Development homepage.

Receiving Online Gifts

Once an Online Giving Form is submitted, the information entered by the donor is checked against existing person records in the system. The form checks for the following combinations of information on person records:

1. Matching last name and email address of anyone in the database
2. Matching last name and home phone number of anyone in the database

Because this process is automated, it is important to verify that each gift has been matched to the correct donor in the system. If the system has not identified a matching person record, manually match the gift to the appropriate donor by clicking into the box in the Person column and searching for that person’s record. If the “Person” field on a pending gift record is blank, the system will automatically create a new person record and household record using the donor information when the “Process Online Gifts” procedure is run.

Processing Online Gifts

This process looks slightly different depending on which screen you start from.

From the Pending Gifts Tab on an Online Giving Form

1. Review the gift(s) and all associated information.
2. Change the status of each gift that should be processed from “Pending” to “Create Gift.”
3. Select Update near the top of the screen to update the record.
4. Run the “Process Online Gifts” procedure from the Action menu (lightning bolt).
5. The final step is to update the record once again. You should see the gift that was previously “Pending” remove itself from the “Pending Gifts” tab and show up in the appropriate “Processed Gifts” tab.

From the Pending Online Gifts Report or Recent Online Gifts Query

1. Review the gift(s) and all associated information.
2. Change the status of each gift that should be processed from “Pending” to “Create Gift.”
3. Select Update near the top of the screen to update the record.
4. Return to the Development homepage to run the “Process Online Gifts” procedure from the Action menu (lightning bolt).

If you were to go back into the Pending Online Gifts report, the gifts you just selected to process should no longer appear. Similarly, if you were to return to the Recent Online Gifts query, you should see the recently processed gifts as having a status of “Complete” instead of “Pending.”

Locating Processed Online Gifts

Once pending online gift records have been processed and donation or pledge records have been created, schools can view those records by clicking into the “Online Donations” or “Online Pledges” queries located under the General section on the Development homepage. These queries display a list of all processed gifts with a Giving Channel of “Online.”