Gift Delete API Question

Alex Wong

@Anthony Gallo

I know a lot is changing/coming for the Gift API and wonder if this is thought about and will be part of the upcoming changes.

The situation is RE NXT event registration transaction/gift, which I'm sure is similar to RE NXT donation transaction/gift.

Currently the web gift batch approving process is still flawed, such that the date of the transaction (which is also the gift date) is used as the gift date added, regardless of when the gift record is “truly” created (date of web gift batch approved). So in order for my daily gift report to work, I created an automation on the gift created webhook such that I am recreating a NEW gift record (which will have gift date added as the date of when the gift is created), then DELETE the gift that was created from the approval of the web gift batch. This worked for my JustGiving integration gift. However, does not work for RE NXT Event registration transaction gift as the DELETE gift API cannot delete gift that has “payment details relating to bbps_transaction_id”.

Questions:

• I think the webbatch approval created gift will have the date added corrected to the date of approval, can you confirm that is being worked on and upcoming?
• Even if the above is true, there is still one more layer of problem, and that is the EDIT (PATCH) gift API endpoint does not allow editing of gift splits (campaign, fund, appeal, package)
  • while RE NXT event registration allow for CFAP to be specified now for “additional donation” and “fee registration". The issue is the fee registration CFAP specification is for ALL fee. We have different package cooresponding to each fee
  • @Kimberly Hammer maybe the best fix to this is to allow for each fee to be able to specify CFAP individually, but an Edit Gift API endpoint that allows gift splits to be updated would be beneficial in many ways too when it comes to automation.
• Can we allow DELETE Gift API endpoint to delete gift that has payment details of bbps_transaction_id?

Anthony Gallo

@Alex Wong
We are slated to get to that gift date added/gift date correction this quarter. It was planned last quarter but it got pushed back for other critical work. Hopefully it stays where it is currently because I would love to see that go out soon.

For the gift delete to work on items with transaction IDs, we are not planning on implementing this. There will be blocks in place to ensure gifts cannot be deleted that have certain properties, transaction IDs, gifts that have been posted, etc.

Is there a reason we would ever want to delete a gift with a transaction ID associated with it? This sounds like a major accounting issue. One scenario would be for test transactions, but is there any other scenario where we think that workflow is valid?

Alex Wong

@Anthony Gallo
Thanks for responding.

Great to hear the fix for gift date added will come soon.

As for delete, due to (1) gift date added issue (2) gift split cannot be edited; my current way to automate gift record to be coded properly when gift is created through approval is by creating a new gift record. With the new gift record (I also copied the payment details completely, meaning I took the payments array and directly used in the JSON to create the gift record), now I have 2 gift records for the same transaction, so I want to delete the original that isn't coded properly but can't.

every org has their specific “gift entry” process on what fields should be coded with what, especially CFAP, not being able to update CFAP on an existing (not posted) gift is an issue for me but I don't think it is only me.

Ideally delete of gift with payment details wouldn't be needed if I don't have to recreate a copy of the gift when:

1. gift date added is fixed
2. editing of unposted gift's CFAP is allowed through API

Anthony Gallo

@Alex Wong
We have work slated for Q2/Q3 to ensure we can fully edit gifts in web view. There will be situations where we cannot edit them, like we have for delete but in general if a gift should be editable like it is in DB view then we should have that same functionality in the web. We will be researching these cases and filling those gaps during that timeline and editing CFA is for sure one we are looking at. We will update the API and UI for that part of the project.

Alex Wong

@Anthony Gallo
Thank you.

Alex Wong

@Anthony Gallo
Who can I talk to regarding BBMS transaction RE gift and the “link” between them?

The reason why I ask is, I remember talking to someone (can't remember the name now) from Blackbaud and they were working on streamlining bank reconciliation. I want to make sure they are aware of different scenerios that may be outside of what they are thinking before they make certain restriction to gift.

For example: donor may give $1,000 donation online (let's say through RE NXT donation form), however, their intent (which may be through communicating directly with fundraiser) is to have $500 applied to a pledge they have and $500 as new cash. That will require the gift to be modified such that the amount is $500 as pay-cash and a new gift created as $500 as cash.

Kimberly Hammer

@Kimberly Hammer maybe the best fix to this is to allow for each fee to be able to specify CFAP individually

@Alex Wong Thank you for the feedback. This enhancement is not currently on our roadmap, but please be sure to vote for the idea on idea bank to receive updates if we decide to move forward with it.

Anthony Gallo

@Alex Wong
@Juliana Lawson is working on this process now and my team is involved from the gifts side.

Alex Wong

@Anthony Gallo @Juliana Lawson
Thank you. Would love to bring some customer perspective into this if given the opportunity to meet.

Bryce Howard

@Anthony Gallo

I understand the need to prevent gift deletions for accounting and reconciliation purposes—maintaining a clear audit trail is important. But I do think there are cases where gifts should be deleted.

Gifts from a donation form that process payments using a BBMS account where ‘Process mode’ ≠ ‘Live’ - there is no need to track these.

Most users do what they can to manage their record count to avoid crossing into the next payment tier. When constituent records reach the point of being eligible for removal, they won't innately be able to.

Previously, there was a workaround to delete web view gifts, which was recently removed. Users could create a dummy record, move web view gifts to that record, and then delete dummy record along with the gifts. OLX is now on the way out and all org on web view forms, I see this slowly growing into an issue.

I'm sure most will continue the dummy-record-workaround with the dummy just forever gathering gifts. Instead of enforcing a strict "No Deletion" policy, having a conditional delete rules based on read-only fields would be nice while still preserving integrity for accounting

Anthony Gallo

@Bryce Howard
We are working on the delete code now and it is going to be restrictive for the reasons already mentioned. That said, we will work on a follow up update on delete to allow deleting gifts from test transactions. This involves flagging these gifts on creation (which we do not do currently) and then updating the delete code. So we are thinking about giving you all some flexibility here for sure.