Entering Recurring Donations
NeonCRM supports automatically recurring donations for credit card or eCheck transactions. This means that a donation will be automatically processed on a repeating basis, using any interval you define.
There are two approaches you can take when creating a recurring donation schedule:
Recurring donations are only supported for two Tender Types:
- Credit Card (Online)
- E-Check/ACH
Starting immediately
To create a recurring donation that processes the payment immediately, you'll need to create a new donation. Either click Add Donation from the navigation menu...
...or find the account record of the constituent who is donating. Click New Donation.
Enter the required donation fields, including Amount. Beneath these fields, you'll see a toggle for Recurring Donation. Turn this to On, then specify how often you want the recurring donation to occur by specifying the recurring payment unit and increment.
If you want the donation to be processed once per month, enter "1" into the Every field and choose Month from the dropdown. If you want the donation to be processed once per year, you can enter "12" into this field (i.e. every 12 months), or enter 1 and choose Year from the dropdown.
If you specify an End Date, the recurring donation will be automatically terminated on that date. No payments will be processed after this date.
Upon clicking Next, you will see the alert message below telling you that Recurring Donations can only be set up using Credit Card or E-Check/ACH as the tender type.
Click OK and complete the donation process as you would for any standard donation.
When you navigate back to the constituent's account page, you will see two new things in the Donations section:
- A record of the donation you just processed.
- A record of the new recurring donation. This shows the amount of the recurring donation, the next date it will be processed, and the end of the recurring period. If no end date was defined, the End Date area will be blank. If you click Detail, you can edit the schedule of this recurring donation. If you click Pay Now, the donation amount will be processed immediately. The recurring donation will then advance to the next scheduled date. You might use this if a constituent were to call and request their payment be processed earlier in a particular month.
Starting Later
If you want to create a recurring donation with a delayed start date, you'll need to click on the New Recurring Donation button.
On this page, enter the relevant transaction details, such as amount, frequency, and the Next Date. Next Date is the date that you want the first recurring transaction to be processed. For example, in this case, Edith's first recurring donation would be processed on March 1, 2016.
Because we have chosen a Next Date that is in the future, the recurring donation shows up without any processed donations below it.
Viewing & Reporting on Recurring Donations
To see a list of all recurring donation schedules, navigate to: Fundraising tab > Recurring Donations.
From here, you can view all recurring donors and filter this list using the search filters at the top of the page.
You can report on recurring donations here: Reports > New Report > Donation > Recurring Donation Report. The Recurring Donation Report has a special search category Donation(R) where you can search on properties of the recurring donation schedule.
You can also report on payments to a recurring donation schedule in a Donation Detail Report by loading the below search criteria:
Donation Created By: Equal 'Recurring Donation'
Changing the Next Payment Date
If you edit a recurring donation, you can change the Next Date by selecting a Donor name from the Recurring Donor List, then selecting Edit.
For example, Edith's's original Next Date is March 1st, 2017. This is when her next recurring donation will be processed.
By changing the Next Date, you change the date that the next recurring donation will be processed. Edith's gift will now be processed on April 1st, 2017. All of her recurring donations from now on will be processed on the 1st of the month.
Updating Credit Card Information as a System User
A system user may need to update the credit card information for a recurring donation on behalf of the donor. To do this, go to the recurring donation schedule and click Edit.
From the edit page, click the Replace Current Credit Card button.
You will be prompted to enter the new payment details under the New Credit Card Information section. Click Submit to save the new credit card for this recurring donation.
Pay Now
When looking at a recurring donation schedule, you have the option to Pay Now.
If you click Pay Now, the donation amount will be processed immediately. The recurring donation will then advance to the next scheduled date. You might use this if a constituent were to call and request their payment be processed earlier in a particular month.
After using the Pay Now button to process a recurring payment before the scheduled Next Date, you will be prompted to either:
- Do not change the next payment date.
- Change your next payment.
Stopping Recurring Donations
You have two options for stopping a recurring donation:
- Change the status to Inactive - this stops any further payments from being processed, but the recurring donation schedule and transaction information is preserved.
- Delete - this removes the credit card or eCheck information and the recurring donation schedule. It does not delete past donations that were created by the recurring donation.
Navigate to the recurring donation schedule you wish to discontinue. Click Edit to change the status or click Delete to remove the recurring schedule completely.
If you change the status to Inactive, you can reactivate the recurring donation at a later time.
The status of the recurring schedule will change to Inactive and display in red, as shown in the example below.
Applying a Recurring Donation to a Pledge
You can link a recurring donation schedule to a pledge by clicking the Apply To Pledge button.
Select the pledge to which you would like to apply the recurring donation.
After applying the recurring donation to the pledge, you will see that these are linked under "Pledge Info" at the bottom of the recurring donation schedule page.
Recurring Donations on Forms
- Standard Donation Form
- Campaign Donation Forms
- Constituent Login Portal
- Display Settings - Intervals and End Date
Recurring Donations on Standard Donation Forms
You can use our web configuration utility to add/remove the recurring donation option from your public and constituent donation forms. You can also change where the recurring donation fields appear on each donation form. Refer to this guide to learn how to configure your forms.
To add the recurring donation option, navigate here: System Settings > Home/Dashboard > Standard Forms > Configure Fields & Sections.
Drag and drop the Recurring Donation Section field into the Selected column from the Page Fields Selector.
Customize the Display Name for the recurring donation options on the next page, as shown below
The Recurring Donation section will now be available on your Standard Donation Form, as shown below.
Donors can set up donations to recur at the following intervals:
Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Monthly, Bi-Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annually, Annually
Recurring Donations on Campaign Donation Forms
For each Campaign, you can configure whether or not recurring donations can be accepted for the Campaign, and if so, specific details about the types of recurring donations.
To edit these donation options for a Campaign, navigate to your Campaign list found here: Fundraising > Campaigns.
Click View to access the settings for an existing Campaign.
Select the Edit button to configure your Campaign recurring donation options
At the bottom of the Campaign Information edit page, you have the following options:
- One-time donation - Any donations made through this campaign form will only be processed once.
- Recurring donation with End Date - The form will only create recurring donations, which will recur until the end date (specified here) is reached.
- Recurring donation with Repeat - The form will only create recurring donations, which will repeat the number of times specified here.
- Allow both one-time and recurring donations on the same form. - The form will present the option to make a one-time donation or a recurring donation. The user will be able to specify an end date of their choice.
Recurring donations from the Constituent Login Portal
To allow your constituent to create new recurring donation from the login portal, you must enable the Display Recurring Donation Link setting for the dropdown navigation option My Donation.
This is configured here: System Settings > Home/Dashboard > Constituent Login Portal > Dropdown Navigation Options.
Clicking Set up up recurring donation will take them to your Constituent Recurring Donation form, which you can customize under System Settings > Home/Dashboard > Forms & Web Pages > Standard Forms > Configure Fields & Sections.
Display Settings - Intervals and End Date
Control which options appear on all of these pages by navigating to: System Settings tab > Home/Dashboard > Forms & Web Pages > Standard Forms > Recurring Donation Online Form Settings.
There, you can determine which recurring time periods are available and whether to add an option for selecting an end date.
Read the full guide about recurring Donation Online Form Settings.
Editing Recurring Donations from the Constituent Login Portal
A constituent can log in to their Neon account to make changes to their recurring donation schedule and update their payment information.
To do this, they can click the Edit link from the Donation History page in your Constituent Login Portal, as shown in the example below.
Clicking Edit takes the donor to your Constituent Recurring Donation page. From here, they can update their billing information and modify the details of their recurring payment schedule. For security reasons, the donor must re-enter their credit card information in order to submit any changes made on this page. If the constituent's most recent recurring donation was declined, they can change the Next Payment Date (MM/DD/YYYY) to the following day.
Learn how to customize the Donation History page in this guide.
Related Guides
- Entering Donations as a System User
- Create a Conditional System Email for Recurring Donations
- Applying an Existing Donation to a Pledge
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