Referential Integrity

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The DONATION program was very carefully programmed to protect you against silly errors which can cause big problems in the future. (Referential integrity is just a fancy Computer Science term for making sure that data in all of your related data files matches up sensibly.)

 

The following are never allowed:

 

-deleting a donor who has made donations this year
-deleting a category in which there are donations this year
-changing a donation which has already had a receipt created for it (you may delete it, after confirming that is really what you want to do)
-entering donation dates that aren't in the current fiscal year
-leaving important information blank, such as last name, or donation date, amount, or category
-entering two donors with the same Member/Envelope #

 

The following are allowed, but only after warning messages which give you a chance to change your mind about them, because they are questionable practices:

 

-changing the name of a donor who has made donations this year (because you may be changing them to be somebody else!)
-deleting a donation which has already had a receipt created for it (you would want to do this if a donation had been entered in error, and you needed to print off a corrected Duplicate receipt)
-changing the donor attached to a donation
-changing the name of a category in which there are already donations
-creating two donors with the same first and last name (if you do have this situation, be very careful when entering their donations to check the address, so you know which is which!)