New Features and Stability Enhancements

admin

The past few weeks have been quite busy. Among other things, we have enhanced the CSV export functionality as well as redesigned our recurring gift subsystem.

Enhanced CSV Export

On your Reports page, you will see that we’ve replaced the CSV link with this fancy Export button:

Pressing the button will bring up a new Export dialog. This gives you the option to specify the payment method, mode of export, the range of dates you would like to include. Selecting the appeal can be done above the graph on the reports page.

The Mode setting may be a bit confusing, allow me to explain.

Gift

In this mode, each row in the CSV export will represent a single gift. If the gift is one-time, there will only be one row. If recurring, all installments to that gift will be consolidated into one row under the Received Events column.

Payment

This mode is probably more familiar. Here, each row in the CSV export will represent a single payment. For a one-time gift, there will only be one row (as before), but for recurring, installments will be spread out over several rows.

Redesigned Recurring Gift System

Since the launch of the GivingTools online fundraising platform 2.0, some of our customers experienced issues with recurring gifts—gifts would fail to recur, be prorated, or bill several installments at once. We dealt with this as reported, but sought a systemic solution to enhance the reliability of our system.

In the past few weeks, we’ve completely rebuilt our recurring gift system from the ground up. We’ve been monitoring the system since its launch, and we’re quite happy with the results. Not only has this new system fixed these issues, but it will also allow additional features such as:

  • The ability for second-time donors to donate without a password—this has been a major concern for many of our customers, and we hear you!
  • Being able to associate a recurring gift with a specific payment method instead requiring them to all use the same payment method.
  • Improved error reporting for card expiration and replacement.

These features will start rolling out over the next several months.

And of course, we’ve done a TON of minor enhancements and stability improvements all over the place. If you have an idea on a feature that you’d like to see, just let us know.