We have a department that brings us many many gifts with paper attached for the donor and gift information.  With the purchase of IOM, I am hoping that we can become more efficient in getting these donors into RE and and the gifts processed faster than ever.  With that in mind, has anyone create an excel template that will contain all the fields needed to be able to load in new donors (if new, or update if not new) and load in all of the gifts into a batch?

 

Thank you in advance!

Sara

Sara Kramer '98

Director of Advancement Services

Benedictine College

 

Hi Sara,
Yes, we do that all the time. You have to map your constituent information and your gift information in the same profile.

Thanks! Did you furnish a template or you just take what they send to you and load it? Any samples would be appreciated! :)

Hi Sara,
I am a new Omatic user and have used RE for a long time. What did you mean by "did you furnish a template or just take what they send to you"? Do you have custom templates built by Omatic? I would think that if there was a template "library" for specific constituents then we could tweak the profiles to meet our needs. For example, we built a new parent profile that works to enter all new parents into RE from our database of record (Veracross). What we did was export info from Veracross and map it to the appropriate RE fields. We have not imported gifts yet but will do that in the near future.
Please let me know how you build your profiles in import-omatic and if you have seen any templates on the forum.

Thanks,
Susan

Hi Sara!

Usually people start with a data file that they want to import and create the template based off of that. In your case it sounds like you are actually looking for the format of the data file itself. Since each implementation of RE is different the best place to start is to look at your process and pick out what data is necessary for creating a new constituent or gift.

One approach might be to sit down and create a constituent and gift as usual and write down each field that you set to make that happen. Then that list of fields will become the columns in your import file. Once you have those columns you can map them all in the IOM profile. The other settings in IOM will let you do things like choose to make a batch of gifts or search for existing donors automatically.

As Marie mentioned above you can include both the constituent and gift information in the same file and IOM will create the constituent if needed (or match it) and create the gift all in the same step!

Thanks, Wayne and Susan. I am looking to create a data file template in Excel for the departments to supply the data and build the profile to import into RE via IOM. I think this is a perfect time to get them to give us what we need instead of what they give us. I just didn't want to re-create the wheel if someone has a great tool/excel file and it might keep me from forgetting to add something to the file. I am new to IOM and very excited to make some of our processes better!

Well, if it helps here is one of our data templates for one of our lockboxes.  It is a bit of a mess because we have been modifying it over the years but it has pretty much everything we need.  As I mentioned before, you will most likely have to add your custom settings for RE but this should give you a start!

Batch Sequence Gift Date GL Post Date Check Date Check Number Amount Constituent ID First Name Middle Name Last Name Appeal Package Fund Campaign Pay Method CC Expiration Date CC Last 4 CCType Reference Title Suffix Company Address Line1 Address Line2 City Zip State Country Spouse Prefix Spouse First Name Spouse Middle Name Spouse Last Name Spouse Suffix Phone Number Email

 

 

Batch

Sequence

Gift Date

GL Post Date

Check Date

Check Number

Amount

Constituent ID

First Name

Middle Name

Last Name

Appeal

Package

Fund

Campaign

Pay Method

CC Expiration Date

CC Last 4

CCType

Reference

Title

Suffix

Company

Address Line1

Address Line2

City

Zip

State

Country

Spouse Prefix

Spouse First Name

Spouse Middle Name

Spouse Last Name

Spouse Suffix

Phone Number

Email

Ours is similar to Wayne's. We also include Title, Gender, Gift Type and Letter Code.
I create my own templates.