Recurring Donations

Overview

This article provides information on CSiDonate's recurring donation feature, including troubleshooting steps and best practices.

Types of Recurring Donations

There are two primary types of recurring donations in CSiDonate.

Recurring Donations

In Recurring Donations mode (sometimes referred to as Standard Recurring), gifts are written on a cash basis into iMIS. Gifts are only written as they are processed by BluePay (see below). There is one record in the Demo_Recurring_Gift table for each recurring plan, including (if applicable) the total expected number of payments and amount.

Recurring Pledge

In Recurring Pledge mode, gifts are written as pledges (accrual basis) into iMIS. Recurring pledges cannot be unlimited, they must be for a set duration. CSiDonate will create the pledge in iMIS, including all future pledge installments, and as each gift is processed automatically via BluePay, the next pledge installment is paid off in succession until the plan is complete.

Recurring Plan Setup

A recurring plan is set up when a donor elects to make a gift recurring on the donation form.

Recurring donations are:

•  Tracked in an iMIS demographic table

•  Charged automatically by BluePay

•  Appear as gifts automatically in iMIS with all of the associated financial information such as batches and invoices

•  Limited or Unlimited (Expires only when the credit card expires* or is cancelled/lost/stolen)

•  Billed weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or yearly.

  • Weekly is every 7 calendar days

  • Monthly is the same day of the month each month, or the last day of the month for days 29-31 that don't occur that month

  • Quarterly is the same day of the month every 3 months

  • Semi-annually is the same day of the month every 6 months

  • Yearly is the same day each year

* – Signing up for BluePay's Account Updater feature allows BluePay to automatically renew and continue to charge a credit card on a recurring plan that has expired but was not lost/stolen/cancelled. This process is 100% automatic, does not require any manual intervention, and incurs an additional processing fee per transaction. Contact CSI or your BluePay rep for more information.

Recurring Donation Do's and Don'ts

 Do: Check the Demo_Recurring_Gift table for records that have the warning flag set and verify the recurring plan status within BluePay.

 Don't: Enter a missed payment into iMIS manually. See the Payment Processing guide for a full list of actions that CSiDonate performs during payment processing.

Tip!

For 2.9.1 and higher, a retry link will be sent to an admin email so that the CSiDonate admin can attempt to re-import the gift properly. Read more about this process on our Automatic Rebilling page.

If this process fails, or for versions lower than 2.9.1, CSI can also help you "replay" a gift from BluePay into iMIS, which follows all of the correct procedures for inserting a gift.

 Manually entering a gift typically leads to missing or incorrect information in iMIS, such as differences with campaign or appeal codes, missing updates to the Demo_Recurring_Gift table, or missing custom Activity UF_ fields.

 Do: Perform your standard reconciliation process and match any BluePay transactions to gifts in iMIS. Follow the troubleshooting steps below if any gifts are missing.

Recurring Demographic Table

For the full table schema, refer to the Demo_Recurring_Gift table page.

The recurring demographic table tracks the following information:

• Recurring start date

• Amount (per payment)

• Number and amount of gifts given so far

• (For limited plans) Total number and amount of expected gifts

• Active/Inactive flag

• Associated financial information (Distribution, Campaign, and Appeal codes)

• Last status from the payment processor

• A warning flag for potentially erroneous plans