Recording each gift accurately keeps your supporters’ giving history, your Gift Aid claims and your fund balances right. A payment can be a donation received, a pledge or an invoice, and it can be split across several restricted funds.

Before you start

  • You need relationships:write:fundraisingactivities to record or edit payments, and relationships:read:fundraisingactivities to see them.
  • The choices in the form come from your beehive’s configuration: payment methods, bank accounts, allocation types and currency. See Relationships settings.

Record a payment

  1. Open the contact’s profile and choose Add payment. Recording a payment marks the contact as a donor.
  2. Under Payer, choose Personal or Organisational. For an organisational gift, choose the Donor organisation, with the contact as Facilitated by; for a personal gift you can optionally Link an organisation.
  3. Under Amount & timing, enter the Amount and currency (your beehive’s default is filled in), and choose the Status:
    • Paid, with the Date paid
    • Pledged, with the date the Pledge expected
    • Invoiced, with the date the Invoice due

    If the payment is in a different currency from your reporting currency, also enter the converted amount in the Reporting field.

  4. Under Payment method, choose the Method (less common methods are under Other…), the Cheque number for a cheque, and the Bank account.
  5. Under What prompted the payment?, optionally choose the fundraising Activity, a fundraising Page under it, and an Event. Choosing an activity applies its payment defaults.
  6. Under Allocation, set the Team, the Allocation type, any tribute fund (tick Made in memory of someone) and the restricted fund. See below.
  7. Add any Reference, Payout reference and External keys under References, and any Acknowledgement personalisation for the thank-you.
  8. Tick Ineligible for tax relief if this payment can’t be claimed for Gift Aid.
  9. Check the Before you save list on the right, then choose Save payment (or press ⌘↵ / Ctrl+Enter).

The payment appears in the contact’s Activity feed under Gifts, marked Pending until it’s been processed. Leaving Ineligible for tax relief unticked doesn’t by itself make a payment eligible for Gift Aid; see Understanding Gift Aid.

Choose an allocation type

The Allocation type says what the payment is for: Donation, Purchase, Grant, Sponsorship or a type your beehive has added. It matters beyond reporting: only payments whose type counts as a gift are considered for Gift Aid and included in giving totals such as Lifetime giving. A payment with no type is treated as a Donation. See Allocation types.

Split a payment across funds

By default the whole amount goes to one fund. Choose a Restricted fund, or leave it as Unrestricted, and optionally name the allocation (Fund name) and record its Terms of restriction.

To split it:

  1. Choose Split.
  2. For each allocation, choose Restricted fund 1, Restricted fund 2 and so on, and enter the Amount. Choose Add allocation for more rows.
  3. Use Split evenly to share the amount equally, or Combine into one to go back to a single allocation.
  4. Watch the total: it reads Fully allocated when the allocations match the payment, or shows how much is remaining or over.

You can’t save until the allocations total the payment amount.

Edit a payment

Select the payment in the contact’s Activity feed to open it, make your changes and choose Save changes. The form also shows when the record was created and updated. There’s no option to delete a payment; to reverse money you received, record a refund. See Refund a payment.

If something goes wrong

  • “Add a payer before saving.” Choose the contact or organisation paying.
  • “Enter an amount greater than zero.”
  • “Allocations total … but the payment is …” Adjust the split until it’s Fully allocated.