Recording an activity’s costs (printing, postage, venue hire) alongside the gifts it brought in helps your team judge whether it was worth running and plan the next one. You do this on the activity’s Expenses & ROI tab.

Before you start

  • You need relationships:read:fundraisingactivities to see expenses and relationships:write:fundraisingactivities to add, change or delete them.
  • The activity must already exist. See Manage a fundraising activity.

Add an expense

  1. Open All Activities and select the activity.
  2. Open the Expenses & ROI tab.
  3. Choose Add expense.
  4. Fill in the Add expense form:
    • Description (required), for example “Spring mailing print run”.
    • The amount and its currency (both required). The currency starts as GBP; change it if the cost was in another currency.
    • Date (required).
    • Category (optional), for example “Printing” or “Postage”. This is free text, so agree a set of names with your team if you want to compare categories.
  5. Choose Add expense.

The expense appears in the Expenses table, and the Total Expenses card at the top updates.

Change or delete an expense

  • To change one, choose the pencil icon on its row, update the fields in Edit expense and choose Save changes.
  • To delete one, choose the bin icon on its row, check the description in Delete expense, and choose Delete.

Read the totals

The Total Expenses card adds up every expense and shows how many there are. Costs in different currencies are not converted: they’re totalled per currency and shown side by side, for example “£120.00 + €80.00”.

Despite the tab’s name, it doesn’t calculate a return-on-investment figure for you yet: it shows costs only. To judge the return, compare the Total Expenses figure with the payments your team has coded to this activity.

If something goes wrong

  • “Description is required.”, “Amount must be a number.”, “Currency is required.” or “Date is required.” Complete the field named and try again.
  • “Failed to save. Please try again.” The expense wasn’t saved. Check that you have relationships:write:fundraisingactivities and try again.
  • If deleting fails, the Delete expense window stays open. Close it with Cancel and try again later.