Process for Failed Recurring Gifts in NXT

Stephanie Vendette

We're still new to NXT and have converted our recurring gifts to automation. Based on suggestions, we've been committing the failed $0 since NXT will re-try and update the gift on file.

Unfortunately, the first few $0 were posted through General Ledge. When a re-try attempt was successful, instead of skipping to the following scheduled date or creating a new gift, the system updated the posted gift amount from $0 to $25. Since the gift was already posted through General Ledger, we had to post an adjustment for FE to recognize the amount change.

The current process adds risks of errors and additional work to our team. I would appreciate hearing from others on how you handle failed recurring gifts through automation.

Austen Brown

@Stephanie Vendette - I usually hold off on committing the $0.00 gift until I know we have updated payment information and there is an opportunity to re-try it.

Another idea, you could create a query for your posting process that excludes the $0.00 gifts that the system uses to communicate hard rejects. That way they would only be included in a post file after the retry is successful and the system updates the gift.

Elaine Tucker

@Stephanie Vendette we commit the zero gift into RE, but mark it as do not post; if at somepoint in the future we are successful in getting the gift to process we update the gift date and the post date to = the date of processing and then change the post status to not posted.

We also use custom fields in the gift to track if we've contacted the donor for updated credit card information, or if the gift was retried & failed. We populate the date on the custom field for the gift so we can see when the “action” was taken.