Now we're losing letters?!

Does anyone know where in the contract this is offered as part of the functionality?

When I asked my rep about it, he said that they didn't want to divulge what the security issue was in case someone took advantage of it which is understandable. What I'm struggling with is what are the best options to move forward with. If anyone has tips, please let me know

Do you have a network at work where you save things or a cloud network, like Google or Office 365? We are a mostly remote org and we use Office 365 SharePoint which is where we save templates like this.

This video was very interesting and informative. Also interesting, was that once the letters were merged some of the formatting was lost. Bet that will be fun, reformatting each letter here and there…

Shawn Steele:

Hi Everyone. I realize that third-party solutions are not always the answer but ReceipterPro does everything being asked for in this thread! It automatically generates receipts, ack letters, soft credit letters and matching gift acknowledgments. It can print or email (based on donor preference), allows for previewing/editing, generates PDFs, supports unlimited templates (including multilingual), digital signatures, easy re-issues and more. Plus, it has no dependency on Microsoft Office!

Here is a link to the marketplace page for ReceipterPro: https://app.blackbaud.com/marketplace/applications/9dd428d7-342a-4bd7-9dad-529de9bccfa6

I just went and looked at their demo video. From the looks of it, there was no way to custom edit letters before they were put out as a pdf. Good pdf editors are an expense many organizations are not willing to take on when they already own MS Office products, and I have not found editing pdfs in Word to work well. So that is a huge negative. If it gave the option to output in Word, not just pdf, I would be more excited about this product.

Hi Sandra,

Its probably not in the quick demo on YouTube, but you can click the ‘Edit Mode’ button and make on screen edits to any document before processing.

Shawn

I had the same thought.

Security issue?? My behind!! Try being honest BB and just say you don't want to pay Microsoft anymore --what you feel like MS is gouging you - now you know how it feels BB!!!!!!!

Sharon Yokelson:

OMG - what a crock of beans!! We are a very small dept - and I am the only RE user. Do you have any idea how long it will take me to generate thank you/acknowledgement letters??? I have actually timed how long it normally takes me to generate a letter from opening the const. gift record to printing the envelope -it now takes almost 4 minutes a letter. Now how long will that take?? I don't have any minions to do this for me. For a small team, we have on average over 600 donors just for the Annual Fund, now in Tributes and Event thank you's!! Way to go RE - and the solution is to just buy another “marketplace” product? WTF

Sharon, I can relate. There are three in my department… the director whose contact with NXT is REALLY minimal, the marketing/events person who has a little more contact with RE and me…. the database person….. and I am scheduled to have knee replacement surgery first week of February….. Right now I'm working on one batch that has holiday, pledge payments, memorials, regular donations and last of the Giving Tuesday letters…… In January add to that my in-kinds and volunteer acknowledgements. AND did I mention we have basic Excel and Word…which I've been able to tweek based on a few videos I've come across…... but there is no “shared drive”, only Google Docs which I've been trying to test for merges and about ready to scream because it just doesn't have the functionality. Whatever direction I go with will have to be one that I think #2 coworker can handle…..

Sandra Moore:

Thanks Shawn. This is good to know. Makes it a much more viable solution.

Of course, what I fear Blackbaud may have lost site of, is that RE itself is a very expensive product. Most organizations have budgets they must adhere to, and Philanthropic organizations also have the additional responsibility to keep expense ratios low so donors know their money is not all spent on administrative costs, and some is actually making it to the cause they wanted to support.

This means that add-ons, after paying for RE, may just not be viable option no matter how great they are. If an organization has to do outside mail merges anyway, they may just look to any one of a number of products that cost far less that export data for mail merges. RE's “everything in one place for one price” toolbox is one of the reasons folks are willing to pay premium. Take away that, and there are any number of competitors that can manage data and spit it out. I'm not sure they will be able to keep their edge when they eliminate the extra tools in DB view completely without replacing them in Webview/NXT, and just rely on being another pretty cloud based database product with limited functionality. Time will tell I guess!

THIS. All this.

NXT is next to useless for me and taking away functionality hamstrings me, a data management and gift recording position.

Beverly Porzelt:
Does anyone know how to get around the address block issue?

As long as you export enough of the merge fields, you shouldn't have a problem … though I would still give a scan of the address blocks before printing as general principle.

For example, our current address block uses the following merge fields:

«Addressee»
«Soft_credit_recipient_1»
«Organization_Name»
«Address_line_1»
«Address_line_2»
«City», «State» «ZIP_Code»
«Country»

If you include the additional Address_line fields (3,4,5) from the “Fields to Export” selection (then edit your template/s), that will export those lines but will not print them or leave blank lines once merged for the final product.

Alternately, you could use Address_block or Address_lines, but I believe it would put the entire address in one Excel cell vs. a line per cell.

Hope that helps.