Software4Nonprofits Blog

This posting is only for the users in the USA.

I just received a call from a potential user, who has donations where someone has bought a brick for $25. The value of the brick is $15, so the receiptable (tax-deductable) amount is only $10. But they want the receipt to somehow reflect all of that.

For Canadian users, the Canada Revenue Agency has very specific ways this type of gift is to be receipted, and DONATION handles that using the Eligible Amount field and special wording on the receipts.

But for U.S. users, I’m afraid I’m really not clear about whether there is any standard way that this should be represented on a receipt. You can use the Eligible Amount field, but the receipts by default show only the total amount ($25 in this case). You can edit the mail-merge receipts to show all three amounts. They are: Eligible Amount – $10, Advantage Amount (what they received) – $15, and total Receipt Amount – $25. But I don’t know what that should look like.

Any suggestions (specific, please!)?

Thank you.

I’m seriously considering adding a Memorized Reports feature to DONATION, so that you can memorize either Custom Reports you have created (from the SQL Select window) or slightly modified built-in reports (e.g. saving any alternate Sort or Filter you have put on them). Here are the draft specifications I have written up for this idea:

• Add a Memorize button to both the SQL Select window and the Report-viewing window.
• In SQL Select, Memorize memorizes the title, style (Normal/Grid), orientation (Portrait/Landscape) and the SQL.
• In the Report-viewing window, if the report came from a SQL Select, Memorize memorizes those same things plus the Sort and Filter. If it came from a built-in report, it memorizes the underlying report’s internal name (called the DataWindow), the Sort and Filter, and the underlying SQL for the DataWindow (which might have been edited using Save SQL and Load SQL). (However, check if it is composite report like Reports -> One Date Donation -> Summary, in that case can’t memorize it, no point, can’t sort or filter them! Actually, Sort and Filter should be disabled for such reports, they are useless.)
• Save to a file in a Reports subdirectory under the program’s Data Directory, named something.rpt.
• For saving, have a window with an input field for the report’s name (without “.rpt”) and a list box of existing memorized report names. If you click on a name in the list box, it puts it into the input field.
• When saving from the Reports window, if it is displaying an existing memorized report, default to re-saving it with that memorized report’s existing name.
• Add a “Memorized Report” menu option to the Reports menu, at the end under Custom Report. It brings up a list box of the existing memorized reports (without .rpt), you select one and click Run to run it, it immediately displays the report.
• Max report name length 50 (excluding “.rpt”, which the user never sees unless they use Computer or My Computer to look in that directory). (Is 50 a good maximum?)
• How to further edit an existing Memorized report that came from SQL Select? I guess have a checkbox on the Memorized Reports window for “Edit first in SQL Select window”, which would only be valid for ones saved from there (or saved from the Reports window if they came from there).
• When saving a memorized report that you are editing in the SQL Select window, again default to re-saving it with its existing name.

Any thoughts, comments or suggestions? Please  post them as a Reply to this blog post.

Sorry to bug you again so soon, but I suddenly had a thought about a somewhat signficant change that I wanted to get people’s opinions on.

Currently, if you create a receipt (or receipts) using Receipt menu options other than Current Donor Sample, and then close the receipt-viewing window without printing them, saving them to PDF or sending them by email, a question pops up. It asks whether you want to save the receipts back to the database anyways.

I find what happens a lot is that people answer Yes to this, when they should have answered No. Then when they go to run the receipts later (perhaps at the year end), they find out that some donations have already been receipted, even though the receipts weren’t sent to the donors, and those donations thus aren’t included on the new receipts. The solution is usually to delete all of the receipts with Receipt -> Delete Range, and then recreate them. But this leads to a lot of support calls and emails!

What I’m wondering is, maybe I should just remove the option to save the unprinted receipts to the database. So if you have only viewed them, and close the window, they are gone. It is just a preview, in essence. (There would be a message explaining that, but no option about it.) That would eliminate that support headache for me, and that problem for those users who have that problem.

I really can’t think of a situation in which I would want the receipts to be saved even though I hadn’t printed (or PDF’d or emailed) them. Can any of you? You can always recreate them with the same Receipt menu option you just used, of course.

Another slightly related change that I already made yesterday was, if someone uses Receipt -> All Donors and it’s before the year end, to put up a message saying that that menu option is usually only used after the year end, and confirming that the user wants to do that.

Any thoughts? Thanks.