Why You Should Learn Imports

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When I assumed the role of Database Administrator at my organization three years ago, one of the biggest headaches I dealt with was processing Employee Campaign checks. At that time we used a recurring batch for entering them into Raiser’s Edge.

Entering gift amounts for 250+ employees one by one was tedious, time-consuming (taking up to 30-45 minutes) and came with the risk of applying the amount to the wrong pledge if an employee had more than one pledge recorded in the system.

Around this same time I was actively pursuing Raiser’s Edge training and came across the import classes…which changed my life! As soon as I watched them I thought: Why aren’t we using imports for the Employee Campaign??? I reached out to our accounting department and asked what exactly they did when they processed payroll and cut us the check. Their process was fairly straightforward: they exported each employee’s deduction into a spreadsheet and provided me a copy of the spreadsheet with the Employee’s first name, last name, employee ID number and amount deducted. Armed with this information I asked if there was any reason I couldn’t provide a spreadsheet (that was really an import template) for them to use instead. Then they could just match the employee ID number and fill in the gift amount for that pay period. They agreed and we decided to give it a go.

The import template I created looks something like this:

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I have all the pertinent information filled in (First Name, Last Name, Employee ID Number, Campaign, Fund, Appeal, etc.) including the original pledge amount, the amount per pay period and a highlighted column for accounting to complete. Because we have Employee ID numbers (which are in RE as the SS Number) accounting can just do a VLOOKUP to populate the highlighted column. When I receive the excel document back, I double check to make sure that the donation amounts match the amount on the check, fill in the additional required information (GFImpID, GFRef, GFCheckNum, GFCheckDate, GFPayMeth and GFAck), convert it to a .csv file and import it.

In summary, by moving away from batch entry to imports for our Employee Campaign I save myself on average about 1.5 hours a month, which may not sound like much, but if I get back 18 hours a year that’s time for me to work on all of the other database administration functions on my plate…like constituent code cleanup. J

Happy Importing!

News Tips, Tricks, and Timesavers! 05/06/2019 3:13pm EDT

Added by Mercedes McCayRead

5 Comments

Sherri Hamblin Oct '19

I love the importing functionality. I use it for so many tasks such as when we have a new batch of screened volunteers and then when it is time to track all of the volunteer hours. It used to be entered manually by the volunteer coordinator. They found it exhausting and not useful as they were never caught up so could not use the data for current reporting. We now complete this quarterly and are able to generate reports instantly. I also use it to update appeal records when direct mail segments are sent.

Lori McDermott Aug '19

Great info! Thanks!

Aubrye Carr Jul '19

Yes, yes and yes! I use import regularly and have several templates already built for multiple uses. Time saver for sure!

Trina Bird May '19

Great blog post! I would like to try using more importing with eTapestry.

Joanne Felci May '19

LOVE importing!! Such a time saver!