Converting DBV Recurring Gifts to NXT

Shelley Bell

Hi All - my team is exploring converting our current DBV RG gifts over NXT. We just started using NXT standard donation forms last fall. We have a very robust monthly sustainer program and I wanted to get a lay of the land in NXT gift processing before we did the RG conversion. With a conversion in our future, I would be curious what others have experienced? I am asking for any hints, tips or pitfalls that could help with this process. Thanks in advance for your assistance and HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

Nyree Henderson

@Shelley Bell
We converted our RGs into NXT automated RGs approx one year ago. We used the free RedArc module to do this. We had to clean up our RGs to ensure there were no outstanding instalments due, then RedArc did the conversion for us which only took a few hours. Now the instalments occur automatically and put into a batch automatically with no staff involvement (except closing the batch). It has saved a huge amount of staff time. The only issues are:
- Multiple Gift Batches are created, not just one Gift Batch. There doesn't seem to be any logic to which Gift Batch an instalment appears in (eg; it's not based on card type or RG start date). I think the data might be sent in packets of information? So if you have all your RG instalments occurring on the same day of the month you will need to close 10+ batches.
- The batches don't appear until the following day. So if instalments occurred on a Monday you wont see that Gift Batch to close it until Tuesday.
- In Australia automated RG instalments are only available for credit-card payments, not for direct-debits from bank accounts.
Overall I definitely recommend automating your RGs in NXT.

Shelley Bell

@Nyree Henderson
Thanks for the tidbits, Nyree. We have 2 different BBMS accounts and I found out yesterday that we will have to do the conversion manually as BB NXT is unable to identify which BBMS account to use for each gift. Are there any features unavailable in NXT that were available in DBV?

Candy Reichert

@Nyree Henderson
You might check to see if you can Move the gift from one batch to the other. Then you could put all RG's into one batch before Approving the batch. That's what I do with gift that are charged on the same day. You have to do it with each gift individually.

Christine Robertson

@Candy Reichert I haven't personally processed very many automated RG gifts in webview, so I want to make sure that I'm not missing something. Does every automated gift create a separate webview gift batch?

Faith Murray

@Shelley Bell
My question is what happens if a gift fails transaction. In db view, if a gift payment doesn't process one month, it pulls two installments over the following month (current payment and past due) if the transaction is not manually skipped. Since webview batches run automatically, do you get a chance to preview and eliminate duplicate charges before processing?

Austen Brown

@Christine Robertson - Gifts are grouped into WV Batches by date, then by pay method (cc vs dd) and payment type (recurring gift payments will be in "installment" batches). I only recommend making the effort to move gifts amongst batches if gift grouping is directly tied to reconciliation - otherwise there isn't much benefit to the practice.

@Faith Murray - If an installment fails, it will come into batch as $0.00 with a note about the failure. You'll need to get updated payment information from the donor and then re-try the payment, after committing the $0.00 gift to the database. The Automatic Processing feature will look for the next schedule payment. Check out the help documentation for more info:

Christine Robertson

@Austen Brown Thanks - I must have misunderstood. What you're describing seems perfectly fine to me for most cases.

Karen Diener

@Austen Brown:

@Faith Murray - If an installment fails, it will come into batch as $0.00 with a note about the failure. You'll need to get updated payment information from the donor and then re-try the payment, after committing the $0.00 gift to the database. The Automatic Processing feature will look for the next schedule payment. Check out the help documentation for more info:

Does this mean that there will be a $0 gift in the database AND a recurring gift payment, assuming it processes on the retry?

Austen Brown

@Karen Diener - The outcome of the retry will be reflected within the $0.00 gift record; no new gift records will be added.

• If it's successful, the system will update the gift amount to be the amount charged.
• If unsuccessful, the $0.00 gift amount remains and the comments will be updated.

Here's more info on this process:

Nyree Henderson

@Shelley Bell
Features of Gift batches that are available in DatabaseView but are not available in WebView are:
- in an open Gift Batch you can't edit and do a Global Change (eg; you cant change the Appeal Code for all Gifts in that Batch, you would need to do it one-by-one).

Nyree Henderson

@Christine Robertson
Automated RG gifts are all put into Gift Batches, but there seems to be a limit on the number of transactions in a Batch. We have 2000 credit-card RGs that are automated to all occur on the same day. The following day when I go to close the Gift Batches, 4 Gift Batches have been created with 500 transactions in each Gift Batch.