Contents of donation counter and emptying the counter
Last modified: 03-12-2024In this article, you will read more about how the donation counter is built up and how to reset it for a new edition.
The following is covered:
- Donation counter
- Reconciliation of donation amount
- Reset counter to zero
- Fundraiser, donation and team archiving roadmap
Donation counter
The donation counter is a sum of the following components:
Donation amounts
- All donations that have paid status
- All manual donations
- One-off authorisations and payments via invoice that have pending status
Entry fee
- Only if set to be counted in the donation counter
Any discount (via discount codes) will be deducted from the registration fee, unless configured differently for the website
What's not in the donation counter:
- Contribution transaction costs
- Webshop
- Donations falling under closed campaigns where it was chosen not to include them in the numerator count
- Credit card payments with 'pending' status
- Committed donations
Reconciliation of donation amount
To check all this, you should download an Excel file at website level at donations > overview donations > Create Excel file
*You may have campaigns whose donations have been removed from the counter (by closing the campaign, and then via Settings > Campaign status removing the amount from the counter). You can recognise these by the exclamation mark in the overview of campaign:
In that case, you need to exclude donations on these campaigns first. You do this by going to the 'Campaign title' column and filtering out the campaigns that do not count.
Steps to calculate the counter:
- Select all columns and turn on the filter
- In the 'Payment status' column, turn on the following statuses: N/A and Paid
- Go to the 'Donation amount' column and write down the total accumulated amount of the column (A)
- Remove filters (apart from any campaign title filters)
- In column 'Payment method', select Authorisation and Payment by invoice status
- In the 'Payment status' column, select Pending status
- Go to the 'Donation amount' column and write down the total accumulated amount of the column (B)
- Remove filters (apart from any campaign title filters)
- In the 'Payment status' column, turn on the following statuses: N/A and Paid
- In the 'Show in donation counter' column, select Yes status
- Go to the 'Entry fee' column write down the total accumulated amount of the column (C)
- The amount on the counter is (A) + (B) + (C)
Reset counter to zero
There are many sites that work with donation years (e.g. 2019) or have recurring events. For these, it is useful to reset the counter to zero so that it is ready for the next edition.
There are several options for setting the counter to zero, depending on how your platform is set up.
1. Close campaign
The best option is to group the entire overview of donations and fundraisers into a campaign, e.g. '2019'. You can then close this campaign and change the campaign status. You can then indicate that you don't want to count the amount in the counter status. That way, the money goes out of the counter status and you have total proceeds and donations from the previous edition clearly displayed in your dashboard. Here you can see a step-by-step plan to do this. Tip: Copy your campaign if you want to create a new edition.
Don't have any campaigns and still want to reset the counter via this method? Then contact us, we can print a script for this.
+ All donations are clearly archived in a campaign
+ Returning participants keep their login details and are recognised for a next edition
2. Negative manual donation
The quickest way to reset the counter is via a negative manual donation. You do this by making a manual donation with a minus sign (-) in front of it.
+ A lightning-fast way to reset the counter position instantly
- All fundraisers, teams and donors remain in the same place. This can cause possible problems with a new edition
You can close the old site, archive it and create a new site. That way, you start with a clean slate. The disadvantage is that you have to rebuild the new site and users have to create an account again. There are also costs associated with this.
+ You start with a clean slate and can set up the site for the new edition as you wish
- There are costs associated with creating a new site. Please contact your sales consultant for this
- Users must create a new account on the new site
Fundraisers, donation and team archiving roadmap
The option to close a campaign and not have the stand counted towards the tally is the nicest one. But what if not all fundraisers and donations hang under a campaign? This way, you can then still archive it:
- Choose a campaign you want to hang all fundraisers and donations under (or create a new one). For example, edition-2019
- Move all teams created at site level to the newly created campaign*
- Move all site-level fundraisers to the newly created campaign*
- Move all donations to the newly created campaign*.
- For manual donations, you cannot move them. In that case, it is best to remove the donation and create a new donation at campaign level
- Close the campaign (Tip: check whether you have automatic mail on or off before closing the campaign)
- Set the campaign status via Settings > Campaign status to 'No, do not show the statistics of this campaign in the total counter status on upper levels'.
Frequently asked questions
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