Is there any way to manually mark an installment as having received a reminder?

Kati Duffy

I usually do pledge reminders through a query and mail merge rather than using the mail option because I like to be able to review and remove individual installments, and I use pledge reminder time to review overdue installments with our gift officers. The problem with this is that they don't get marked as having received a reminder, so I have to track reminders manually. But if I run it through the mail, since I'm manually removing certain pledges, some donors who did not receive a reminder would get coded incorrectly as having received a reminder.

Is there any way to code it into the reminders history that they've received something? I could just use actions, but it feels silly to have a workaround like that if there's a pre-existing field for it.

JoAnn Strommen

I have similar issue. Of reminders for those with due/past due amounts this month, development officers do not want about half sent. I don't know of any way to mark a specific installment but you can edit the reminder pull to just those you will send.


My process is to take create a constituent output query when I run the list for review. After list is reviewed I can exclude those not being sent from within the query (ID or name not one of), re-run query and then use the query to generate the ones I want and mark in reminder history. I have also created a 'specific record one of' query really quick and used that as records to include.


Maybe that will help you.

Karen Diener

I used to run reminders quarterly, and add a gift attribute to the pledge to note that a reminder was or wasn't sent. Category was “pledge reminder sent” and the description was a yes/no field.

If I didn't send the reminder for any reason at all, the description was “No” and I always indicated in the attribute comments why I did not send the reminder. It was sometimes because the gift officer was meeting with them and would hand-deliver the reminder, but often some unknown reason.

It didn't take too long to notice that payments were rarely collected when reminders weren't sent.

Karen

Kati Duffy

That seems like it might work, JoAnn! So to clarify, you set the mail to pull records from a query that was set to the ones you were sending only? That's such a cool plan! Thank you!

Beth Green

I do something similar, JoAnn. I create a query list and remove any constituents not receiving reminders that month, then use that query list in Mail. It would be nice to have a manual option, as so many times I am instructed not to send certain installment reminders!