Copying Missing Donors

The Database à Copy Missing Donors option brings up a sub-menu, with two options: From current year to previous year, and From previous year to current year. This allows you to copy missing donors, donation categories, and donor categories from one year to another.

Here's why you might need this. When you first start working on a new year by using Maintenance à Change Year à Next Year or Previous Year, it copies all donors and categories from the current year to the new year you have selected. However, subsequent times that you switch to that year, it does not copy any further donors or categories.

So, suppose you've been working on 2007, and on January 1, 2008, you switch to 2008 for the first time. All donors and categories from 2007 (that you have entered so far!) will be copied to 2008. Now, suppose you notice a few late donations that you still need to enter for 2007, and they are for new donors. You switch back to 2007, and enter those donations and donors. Then, switch back to 2008. The new donors aren't in 2008! That's what this feature is for, to copy those missing donors from 2007 to 2008. In this case, when you were in the 2008 year, you would use Database à Copy Missing Donors à From previous year to current year to fix things up.

Of course, it is possible to just re-enter the missing donors manually. This is a bad idea for two reasons. First, it's extra typing! More importantly, if you enter a donor manually in two different years, and then do a report that compares donations between the two years by donor (e.g. Reports à Donor à Donation Info à Sort by Name), it won't correctly match up the donations for that donor for the two years. In fact, you will get two rows on the report for the same name, one containing only the current year's donations, and one containing only the previous year's donations.

Another cause for missing donors is that when you do first open a new year, and it prepares to copy from the previous year, it asks you whether to only copy donors that have donations within the last two years. If you answer Yes to that (a reasonable choice), some donors will be skipped. If you later do get some donations from those donors, you would want to bring those donors forward by using this new option. (Of course, doing so makes it as if you answered No to that question.)

Some users may be wondering at this point, how do I copy missing donors to or from the next year, rather than the previous one? Just move forward to the next year, then use this option. For instance, say you are in 2007 and you want to copy missing donors to 2008. Just move to 2008, then use the From previous year to current year option.

Another important question to which you should understand the answer is, what is the program's definition of a "missing" donor or category? Contrary to what you might expect, it is not based on the name of the donor or the name of the category! Basing it on names would be too error-prone. You might have entered the same person in two different years with slightly different spellings, or you might genuinely have two different John Smiths. Both of those would cause errors if it was done by name.

Rather, the rule really is that if a donor or category didn't get into a given year (either the one you're copying from, or the one you're copying to) by being copied in the first place by the program, it is considered to be missing. ("Copied by the program" includes being copied by the Change Year routines, and by the Copy Missing Data routine.)  This has some interesting side-effects, however. Suppose you did hand-enter a new donor record for John Smith in two different years. If you then use this routine, you will end up with two copies of John Smith in the year you are copying to!

It's also important to understand that the program only copies entire missing donors. It does not update changed addresses or other information for existing donors! That must be done by hand, if it is important to you that previous year's records for the donors also have the same corrected address. (In most cases, I would guess, that would not be important – only the current year would have to be updated with new addresses.)

If you use Copy Missing Donors and then find that you have duplicate donors in one of the years, because you had already re-created the same donor manually in the year you were copying to, you can use the Database à Merge Duplicate Donors menu option to fix that, by deleting the duplicate.