Recurring Gifts- Best approach

Kayla Lowe

I recently joined an organization that has been using Raiser's Edge NXT for some time, but it hasn’t been fully utilized or accurately maintained. After a month of training, I received a report from HR detailing the current employee deductions for a scholarship fund that supports employees. Approximately 220 employees have biweekly deductions from their paychecks directed to this fund.

I’m seeking advice on how to input this information into Raiser's Edge NXT. Since the deductions are automatically taken from their paychecks, I don’t need to enter financial details. However, we want to track these recurring gifts for reporting and scholarship purposes.

I attempted to import the list through the plugin Import Recurring Gifts. However, when I go to validate the file it keeps giving me an error and saying the CSV file is not the correct format.

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

Dariel Dixon

@Kayla Lowe Whoa! That's a lot. I think a lot of this depends on how your payroll deductions are set up? Are they actually recurring until the employee leaves the organization, or do employees have to sign up annually?

I would not create gifts for each gift since you are entering them at the end of the year. I would imagine you'll have plenty of partial gifts from employees who have left the organization.

Whenever I have to do payroll deductions, we only get the file at the end of the year from HR, so we don't enter them as recurring gifts, but as one time gifts to make things easier. When I worked at an organization that did get regular updates, we set them up as a recurring gift batch. The gifts were then setup to either be applied to a pledge or recurring gift, and we only had to change the dates. Obviously, when someone else the organization (or came back), we had to do some maintenance on the batch. It was always hard, because that organization had a lot of deductions from individuals that were either seasonal, or worked part-time on an as needed basis. And HR didn't inform us if a person left that had a pledge or recurring gift so we could terminate those gifts.

In regards to the file being in the wrong format, I've never used that plugin, so I'm not aware of the format needed. I would look into just importing the gifts through normal means or look into a recurring gift batch.

Kayla Lowe

@Dariel Dixon, are you suggesting that I do not put them in until the end of the year? This would then translate to not entering them as recurring gifts either.

The deduction is set up for recurring and continues until the employee leaves, employment is terminated, or a form is filled out requesting a stop or change.

What are the normal means of importing gifts?

Laura Neidhold

@Kayla Lowe Hi Kayla, my organization has a similar program for our payroll deduct employees (about 300). If you have the ability to use database and the batch tool, our process is to use the recurring batch tool and edit the batch as employees come and go or change their payroll deduction details. Happy to connect and share more about what has worked for us.

Dariel Dixon

@Kayla Lowe What I was suggesting is that the creation of the recurring gifts can be entered manually, and that you use a recurring gift batch to enter the payments. Obviously, this depends on how often you're getting the information for the deductions. In my case, I only get one list of deductions for the year. If you are getting them bi-weekly or whatever, then a recurring gift batch would be the way to go.

I'm not familiar with the plug-in to give any advice about that. I generally just use the import tool in the admin console. Importing recurring gifts is more difficult as you have to create the schedule for payments.

Kayla Lowe

@Dariel Dixon Thank you for all your help!

Kayla Lowe

@Laura Neidhold I just took the Batch class with Blackbaud University and it helped me understand a bit more. I think the best way to get all the employee deductions into the system is to use batch. I would love to hear more about what works for you and your organization!

Keith Wilson

@Kayla Lowe We have payroll deductions imported into RE-NXT as one-time donations. The frequency is bi-monthly. We built a Power Automate Workflow that takes a CSV file generated in HR and and then creates the gift records in RE-NXT. It saves countless hours of time! If you don't have anyone in your org that has access/ability to create a Power Automate workflow, there are plenty of geniuses on this forum that can assist!

I'll also add we never have to look for employees that have exited/onboarded either like you do with the Recurring Gift Batch method.