Get to Know the Single Gift Entry Form

Enter Data in One Place with the Single Gift Entry Form

The Single Gift Entry form lets you enter donor information, payments, allocations, soft credits, tributes, and matching gift information on a single page.

All the little pieces of a gift can add up to a lot of time and data entry if you're working in out-of-the-box Salesforce. A gift split into 12 months requires 12 individual records. A gift intended for different funds requires a separate record for each fund on each payment. A gift soft-credited to all members of a household needs a record for each person credited. There’s no other way to say it: all these records take a lot of typing, a lot of clicks, and a lot of page loading. Your users have better things to do with their time.

But the GEM Single Gift Entry form presents all of these little pieces in a single form and automates data entry where it can. You can easily enter payments, allocations, soft credits, tribute information, matching gift information, and other donation information on one page, without all the clicking around to separate Opportunity records, Payment records, and so on. Payment splits are automatically calculated and scheduled, while giving you the chance to make adjustments before creation. You can even customize the form by adding your own fields.

Let's look at an example of entering a typical pledge. Say we’ve just received a pledge from alumna Selina Rodriguez to pay $200 a month for six months, and Selina wants her donation handled in certain ways. The Single Gift Entry form is a one-stop location to record everything. We access it by clicking the Single Gift Entry tab, in the Gift Entry Manager app.

Donor and Donation Information

Learn about the donor and donation information sections of the Single Gift Entry form.

Notice that the fields in the top two sections sound a lot like Opportunity fields. When you create a gift in the Single Gift Entry form, GEM creates an Opportunity with the Donation record type.

If the Primary Contact has an unpaid Payment or an open Opportunity with no unpaid Payments:

• We're notified that the donor already has pending donations so that we don’t end up with duplicate donations.

• We can click the notification to view pending donations.

• If one of the displayed Opportunities is a match, we can either click Update this Opportunity or Apply New Payment. Both links load the selected Opportunity's data into the Single Gift Entry form and bring you back to the form so you can add and modify Payments. The only difference is that the Apply New Payment link takes you directly to the Payment Scheduler.

  

• If none of the displayed Opportunities match the gift, we click the option to create a new Opportunity.

Note If we select an existing Opportunity and realize upon reviewing its data that it's not the right match, we can return to the Review Donations page (via the Update your selection link under Donor Information) and change our selection or create a new Opportunity. We can change the Opportunity selection as long as we haven't saved our edits in the Single Gift Entry form.

Payment Scheduler

Learn how Payment Scheduler helps you manage multiple payments for a single gift.

The Payment Scheduler helps us split a gift into multiple payments pledged to arrive on different dates. At the end of the process, it creates a related Payment record for each payment we schedule. After we enter an amount, the number of pledged payments, and their frequency, we click Clear and Calculate New Payments to display each individual payment. We can then manually edit each payment line without disrupting the others.

While we're looking at Payments, let’s clear up a little language. Despite its name, a Payment record doesn’t always refer to a payment received. It can be a Payment that has been promised by the donor but not yet paid. The Paid field on a Payment indicates whether you actually have that portion of the gift in hand.

The Payment Method field is special, as it can make additional fields appear based on the Payment Method chosen. For example, if Check is selected, the Check/Reference Number field appears. This logic is controlled by the Gift Entry Field Mapping setting. See Set Up Dynamic Fields for more information.

Tip If all Payments are entered as paid, the gift Opportunity’s Stage is automatically set to Closed Won (or whatever value you set in Opportunity Stage for When Fully Paid, in NPSP Settings | Donations | Payments).

Allocations

Learn how Allocations are used to attribute gifts and payments to specific funds.

Allocations (sometimes referred to as designations) are how gifts get attributed to specific funds, using your org's General Allocation Unit (GAU) records. Each gift Opportunity and each Payment has at least one related GAU Allocation record, so that every portion of every gift has direction.

We can designate multiple allocations by clicking Add New Allocation. We then set the GAU for each allocation, as well as the amount or percent. When the form is saved, GEM creates one Opportunity-related GAU Allocation record for each allocation, and a Payment-related record for each combination of allocation and payment.

For example, if we enter two allocations and four payments, we get a total of 10 GAU Allocation records: two are related to the Opportunity and eight are related to the Payments, with two GAU Allocation records related to each of the four Payments.

Note If we don’t set an allocation, or if the total percentage is below 100%, GEM creates GAU Allocation records and assigns the remaining percentage to the org’s Default GAU (on both the Opportunity and the Payment levels). See Update Default GAU for more information.

The two locations for GAU Allocations serve similar purposes. The GAU Allocations on the Opportunity are used as reference for new Payments; if a new Payment is created, the percentages (or allocation ratios, if percentages aren’t set) are used to determine how to allocate the new Payment. Likewise, the GAU Allocations related to Payments (labeled on the Payment as “Payment Allocations”) are used as reference for new Ledger Entries, giving them direction when a Payment is paid.

Note If you edit one of your Payment Allocations, the Opportunity’s GAU Allocations then serve an additional purpose: they display the current totaled amounts and percentages of all of the Opportunity’s Payment Allocations across all Payments. See Manage Gifts for more information.

Soft Credits

Learn how to use soft credits in the Single Gift Entry form to associate gifts with Contacts.

Each soft credit entered in the Single Gift Entry form creates a Partial Soft Credit record linked to the gift Opportunity and the soft-credited Contact (the person credited for a gift but not the actual donor). It also creates a Contact Role with the role of “Soft Credit,” so that this person is represented in the full context of the gift and its story.

We can add multiple soft credits to a gift by clicking Add New Soft Credit. We then enter the person who's being credited, the amount they're being credited for, and the role under which they're being credited. For example, if we give a soft credit to Kieran Lynn, Selina’s friend and neighbor who helped her raise the money for the gift, we select the role “Soft Credit.” If Selina wishes to include her partner as a soft credit, we'd select the role “Household Member.”

Tip We can add or edit role names by editing the Role Name picklist on the Partial Soft Credit object (Setup | Object Manager | Partial Soft Credit | Fields and Relationships) and the list of Opportunity Contact Roles (Setup | Contact Roles on Opportunities).

Tribute Information

Learn how to designate gift tributes in the Single Gift Entry form.

Many donors make gifts in honor or in memory of others. Though this detail doesn't affect the ledgers in any way, it's essential to capture it accurately because it's often one of the most important aspects of a gift to donors.

GEM copies any data we enter in the Tribute Information section to the data's corresponding fields on the gift Opportunity. In addition, setting an Honoree Contact creates a Contact Role on the gift Opportunity, with the selected Contact and the role of “Honoree Contact."

Note While some Tribute fields mention notifications, nothing entered here automatically sends any notifications. These fields are a foundation for building your own notification automation, using built-in or third-party email marketing or document automation tools. Talk to your Account Executive or implementation partner about your options.

Matching Gift

Learn how to use the Single Gift Entry form to track matching gifts.

We can enter employer-matched gift information, either by name or by linking an existing Account. If an Opportunity already exists for the match, we can enter it here as well. Finally, we can track whether the match has been received.

GEM copies any data we enter in the Matching Gift section to the data's corresponding fields on the gift Opportunity.

Summary of Resulting Records

Review which records the Single Gift Entry form creates.

That’s a lot of records being created from a single form! Here’s a summary.

1. An Opportunity record for the gift itself.

2. A GAU Allocation record, related to the Opportunity, for each allocation entered.

3. A Payment record for each payment entered.

4. A GAU Allocation record, related to the Payment, for each combination of payment and allocation. These records are found in the Payment Allocations related list.

5. A Partial Soft Credit record for each soft credit entered.

6. Opportunity Contact Role records for the donor, the honoree contact, members of the donor’s household account, and each soft credit entered.