When adding Pledge Gifts, we provide you with two Gift Area Mappings: Pledge Gift Schedule and Pledge Gift Payments. Pledge Gift Schedule allows you to import the initial Pledge Gift that contains the ‘schedule’ of the Pledge (frequency, number of instalments, and dates when instalments are expected). The Pledge Gift Payment gift area mapping allows you to look for an existing Pledge Gift Schedule and, if found, apply the gift as an instalment to that pledge. The Pledge Gift Payment will be treated as a Gift Type of ‘pay-cash’.
There are area setting on the Pledge Gift Payment Gift mapping that allows you to decide what happens when a Pledge Gift Schedule is not found or an expected instalment doesn’t match, including creating a One-Time Gift instead. See below for more information.
Two Imports Required and Automation
If you would like to import a Pledge Gift Schedule and then import Pledge Gift Payments for that schedule, you will not be able to do this within the same template. You will need to create two templates: One for adding the Pledge Gift Schedule and a separate one for adding the Pledge Gift Payment. This is because you can’t match on a Pledge Gift Schedule if the schedule doesn’t yet exist on a record.
If your package includes access to Automations, then you can import your Pledge Gift Schedule template and then have it run your Pledge Gift Payment template immediately after. If you do automate your Pledge Gift templates, consider setting the Pledge Gift Schedules to import gifts directly to record instead of via a Gift Batch.
Pledge Gift Schedule
When mapping your Recurring Gift Schedule, you have the same Key Fields as you have with One-Time Gifts, plus four new Required fields: ‘Schedule End’, ‘Schedule Frequency‘, ‘Schedule Number of Installments’ and ‘Schedule Start‘. With these four pieces of information, Blackbaud works out the schedule of perspective instalments. If you are familiar with RE NXT Database View and/or Importacular Classic this is a considerable streamlined approach, making it much easier to set up new Pledge gifts.
To aid in more accurate matching when trying to find the right Pledge Gift Schedule when importing Pledge Gift Payments, look to your data source and see if you can find a unique identifier that is present on the Schedule and all the payments. Look for common field names for such fields are Recurring Gift ID, Subscription ID and Pledge ID. If your Data Source contains such data, consider adding the unique identifier to the Pledge Gift Schedule as a Gift Custom Field, to the Comment field or the Payment Reference field. Do not add it to the Lookup ID field. There is an Area Setting within Pledge Gift Payments Gift Mapping that allows you to choose the best methodology for matching with Pledge Gift Schedules.
Pledge Gift Payments
Field mappings for Pledge Gift Payments are very similar to One-Time Gifts with all the same fields and Key Fields. What distinguished Pledge Gift Payments is the extra Area Settings that are available. Within the Settings option on Pledge Gift Payments, on the tab called ‘Pledge Matching’, there are a number of different options to consider
Finding a matching Pledge Gift Schedule
Once you have a Pledge Gift Schedule on a record, you can then direct Importacular to try and find it, so the Payment/Instalment can be applied. We present a number of options for you.
First Found – Importacular will seek to find the first active Pledge Gift Schedule it comes across on a record
Comment or Payment Reference – You can use either of these options too to match on unique identifiers from the data source. Since these fields as a little more accessible to users in RE, they do run a higher risk of being altered by accident, making it harder to match on.
Custom Field (recommended) – If your Data Source contains a unique identifier that is present on the Pledge Gift Schedule and the Peldge Gift Payment, then as long the Gift Custom Field is mapped to the Pledge Gift Payment in the template (and the same Custom Field is present on the Pledge Gift Schedule in RE), then Importacular can be set to match on Custom Field. Please remember to tell Importacular which Custom Field to use.
Use the values from the Schedule
If your payment data does not contain enough information to determine what the correct Campaign, Fund, Appeal and/or Package as was assigned to the Pledge Gift Schedule, you can have Importacular use those same values when creating the payment.
Payment Order
Once a Pledge Schedule has been found, you can determine how an instalment should be selected
What if the instalment amount is larger than expected
If the instalment amount is larger than expected, that you can choose to have Importacular create a One-Time Gift for the overpayment or to create an exception.
What should happen when no match is made
You can choose what should happen if Importacular is not able to find a suitable match for the Pledge Gift Schedule. Your options are:
Raise an Exception – By default, an exception will be raised if a Pledge Schedule cannot be found .
Create a one-time gift – Or you can choose to create a One-Time Gifts gift instead. The Gift Type will be that of ‘Cash and not ‘Pay-cash’
