Non-profit trying to send donation receipts

[PhilDaub]

I am new to HubSpot and am having a really hard time figuring out how to send a donation receipt.

We accept donations from both contact and corporations.

If someone gives through fundraiseup they automatically get a receipt. However, many give via check and cash and we need to be able to produce receipts.

Has anyone found a way to automate this? Or at least get the correct information into a report or spreadsheet?

I run into problems where deals do not pull enough information about the associated contacts, and contact/companies do not pull enough information about the deal.

[TomM2 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the futher info Phil! 

If you're using workflows, I'd definitely recomend creating a custom property for your users to mark when a payment has been received. You could just set up a custom checkbox property that can quickly just be checked by a user when they receive payment. This could then be used in workflows for anything you like, you could for example say "If property paid = true send receipt email" 

Regarding auto-creating receipts within HubSpot, it might be worth checking out if there's an integrated tool that does this on the app marketplace but for an internal tool I think the closest thing HubSpot would have to doing something like that is quotes. This can generate invoices/quotes to be sent out to contacts within your HubSpot platform, so might be suitable for your needs! 

For copying from a company/contact record into a deal record, you can use the "copy property value" step within workflows. This lets you copy any property from the object of the workflow (such as contacts) into any other target object. For example in this screenshot I would be copying the "became a custom date" into the deal's "close date" property. You could choose your custom properties for these or any other ones you wish. 

The only consideration would be that this would copy the value into all associated deals with that contact, so if you have multiple deals it may not be perfect for your needs, or you may want to consider association labels. 

Another way of doing this could be through your enrollment, if your receipt date is always set on the day that the receipt date is, you could use this as an enrolment criteria. 

For example you could say in a deal workflow "Contact property receipt date is known AND the deal is closed" as the enrolment criteria. Then you could set an action to "set property value deal receipt date to today". 

Hope this helps a bit! 

[Ericworships · Accepted solution]

Hey, @PhilDaub - We also use FundraiseUp and HubSpot. I think this can be done through a deal automation that checks if the payment method is a check or EFT or whatever you set to be something Fundraise Up would not track, then send an email with dynamic deal info in the body of the email.

If you're looking for a way to send a donation summary for the year, I outline a way to do this all within HubSpot here in this post: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-for-Nonprofits/Solved-How-to-send-annual-tax-deductible-don...

[TomM2]

Hey @PhilDaub the issue here is that check or cash is generally received in person, which would require some manual input to note that it has been received. It's obviously impossible for HubSpot to know if a cheque or cash has been received in your direct mail. 

One thing you could do though is to create a custom property for something like "cheque/cash received" which could just be a checkbox or a "no/yes" dropdown. This would need to be manually updated by a user in your HubSpot portal after the payment has been received. Once it is updated though you could use this to automate emails going out (this would require workflows however which is a pro+ subscription) or you could use this property to report on contacts who have the "yes" value for this property. 

If you're logging these payments in an external system, it might be worth investigating integrations between this system and HubSpot (googling mysystem + HubSpot usually gets an answer) to see if this could automatically mark these properties as yes and avoid a bit of an additional manual step. 

[PhilDaub]

Thanks for your response. And I apologize if I did not provide enough
information.
Yes, of course we will have to input to check or cash donations manually.
And we have the ability to use workflows so I may have put the wrong
version of Hubspot that we are using.
We have to setup to insert a receipt date into the deal when a donation os
imported from fundraise up.
I have a great workflow set that send receipts either via email or adds
them to a spreadsheet for printing via mail merge (Would love to have it
spit out PDF's of this but I cannot seem to find a way?). I have used CRM's
specific to non-profit and receipts is just a basic function, so I was
shocked when it wasn't as simple in hubspot with all the advertising to
non-profits.
Specifically-
I run into issues when pulling information based on deals - I can't get the
associated contact or company data to pull into the workflow that's based
on a deal.
And similarly I cannot get the deal information or add things like a
receipt date to a deal field in a contact/company-based workflow.
I'd love to see how other non profits are pulling data for giving receipts
using workflows. OR if there is another way to do this.
And not being able to trigger an alternative workflow that is not the same
trigger type (I.E. contact flow isn't able to trigger a deal flow) makes it
even more difficult to find a work around.

Would love to hear any ideas or see some examples folks have.
Phil

[TomM2 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the futher info Phil! 

If you're using workflows, I'd definitely recomend creating a custom property for your users to mark when a payment has been received. You could just set up a custom checkbox property that can quickly just be checked by a user when they receive payment. This could then be used in workflows for anything you like, you could for example say "If property paid = true send receipt email" 

Regarding auto-creating receipts within HubSpot, it might be worth checking out if there's an integrated tool that does this on the app marketplace but for an internal tool I think the closest thing HubSpot would have to doing something like that is quotes. This can generate invoices/quotes to be sent out to contacts within your HubSpot platform, so might be suitable for your needs! 

For copying from a company/contact record into a deal record, you can use the "copy property value" step within workflows. This lets you copy any property from the object of the workflow (such as contacts) into any other target object. For example in this screenshot I would be copying the "became a custom date" into the deal's "close date" property. You could choose your custom properties for these or any other ones you wish. 

The only consideration would be that this would copy the value into all associated deals with that contact, so if you have multiple deals it may not be perfect for your needs, or you may want to consider association labels. 

Another way of doing this could be through your enrollment, if your receipt date is always set on the day that the receipt date is, you could use this as an enrolment criteria. 

For example you could say in a deal workflow "Contact property receipt date is known AND the deal is closed" as the enrolment criteria. Then you could set an action to "set property value deal receipt date to today". 

Hope this helps a bit!