Today's Tip: Use the Finder Number to Save Time on Data Entry

Wanna save time during data entry after running an appeal mailing or membership renewals?  What if I said using the Finder number field could save you 1 or 2 minutes per transaction entered in Altru?  Got your attention?  Thought so!

Let’s say you run an appeal mailing or process membership renewals and checks start rolling in.  Whether you’re entering donations or membership renewal payments, it needs to be entered into Altru.  To enter the payments you need to search for the person, search for and select the designation or membership transaction, and search for the appeal and effort so you can later measure success of your mailing.  Using the Add Payment Form or Batch, it would take you a minute or two to do all of this.

Rather than searching for these fields, you could instead enter a 5 digit number (Finder number) and automatically have the constituent, designation or membership transaction, marketing appeal and effort, automatically load for you.

And even better yet, if you format the Finder number on your mailings as barcode font, you could scan the number to save more time and reduce data entry errors by not having to type in the number.

When setting up your letters (Appeal or Membership Renewals) include the Finder number merge field at the bottom of the letter.  This works best if the bottom of the letter or renewal notice has a tear off potion for the person to return along with their donation or payment.

Before: this example is for the Add a payment form, but the same is true for entering payments in Batch.



After: Enter the Finder number and notice constituent, designation, marketing appeal and effort all automatically fill in.  This is because the Finder number stores all this information from the appeal mailing or membership renewal.



Using the Finder number will save you time, and reduce data entry errors when entering payments.  If you aren’t using this field now, consider using it for your next mailing.

Please responds with a comment if you take advantage of the Finder number to enter payments or if you have any other tips or tricks to save time when entering payments in Altru.