Importing CanadaHelps Donations into Silent Partner
If you regularly enter donations your organization receives via CanadaHelps into Silent Partner, you might find it more convenient to import them in bulk: Silent Partner has everything set-up for this process.
In order to import donations, you would need to download the Silent Partner donation export file from CanadaHelps.
The CanadaHelps export file must be the one specifically designed for Silent Partner and have the .CSV format.
Next, in Silent Partner Desktop, create a batch, select it, and then choose Functions > Import CanadaHelps Donations from the menu in the top left.
Silent Partner will prompt you to choose the donor record for CanadaHelps in your database so that it can correctly record these donations via this 3rd party.
It will then ask you whether you would like to import new donations or process pending ones. Select "Import file" and choose the CSV with donations from your machine to upload to Silent Partner.
The "Process only" option would apply if you uploaded donations to the program before but did not finish adding them to the batch. You can click "Process only" in that scenario in order to review those donations and either add them to a batch to post, or delete.
It is a good idea to process all the remaining donations this way to make sure they do not show up in the donation import dialog in the next step with every new import.
You will then be presented with the donation import window, which will list all the incoming donations and their details, including the donor names, contact details, donation amounts, accounts, and dates.
The Transaction Number field contains the unique ID number for each donation record, which allows Silent Partner to determine whether or not this particular donation was imported before, and thus avoid double-entry.
Select donations one-by-one and click the Add button at the bottom of the dialog to add them to the current batch.
The donation date for all donations in a batch will be the date of that batch.
Silent Partner will analyze the names and addresses of the donors. If it finds a match in the database, it will ask you to confirm the donor before adding the donation to the batch; if it does not find a matching donor record, it will ask you to either manually pick an existing donor from the database to assign the donation to, or add the new name to the database.
Silent Partner will analyze the names and addresses of the donors. If it finds a match in the database, it will ask you to confirm the donor before adding the donation to the batch; if it does not find a matching donor record, it will ask you to either manually pick an existing donor from the database to assign the donation to, or add the new name to the database.
If no GL accounts and/or Motivation codes were specified in the incoming file or in the batch settings, Silent Partner will ask you to select the GL account and Motivation code for each donation before adding it to the batch.
If you would like to avoid having to select the GL account and Motivation code for each donation, the following tips would be useful:
For GL Accounts:
The GL Accounts in the ACCT column of the incoming spreadsheet have to be identical to the 4-digit GL Account Codes in your Silent Partner database.
If the CanadaHelps export file originally contains GL Accounts that differ from your Silent Partner Account codes, it would be a good idea to manually change them in the spreadsheet to match Silent Partner. For instance, if the spreadsheet contains the account name General, you would need to replace it with the 4-digit account code from your Silent Partner, such as 4010.
For Motivation Codes:
The original Silent Partner CanadaHelps export file does not contain a column with Motivation codes. Motivation codes could be handled in the following way:
1. You could manually add a column with the header MOTIV (it has to be this specific header for Silent Partner to recognize it) to the spreadsheet before importing and populate the rows with the motivation code for each donation. Please note that motivation codes, just like GL account codes, have to fully match your motivation codes in Silent Partner.
2. You could specify the motivation code in the batch settings: in this case, the same motivation code will apply to all the incoming donations in that batch.
3. You could set a specific motivation code to be the default for CanadaHelps donations, in which case Silent Partner will automatically assign it when no motivation code is specified in the incoming file or the batch settings.
To make a motivation code the default for CanadaHelps donations, go to Codes > Motivation codes, select and double-click the relevant code to edit it and enable the flag "Web Donations Default":
To make a motivation code the default for CanadaHelps donations, go to Codes > Motivation codes, select and double-click the relevant code to edit it and enable the flag "Web Donations Default":
Once all the donations have been added to the batch, you could always open the batch using the Enter Donations button, review and check the donations, and make manual adjustments if necessary before proceeding to post the batch.
If you have any questions about any part of the donation import process, please do not hesitate to reach out to our support team at support@silentpartnersoftware.com for assistance.
In addition to importing CanadaHelps donations, it is also possible to import donations from other external sources in a CSV spreadsheet. Donations will be imported via Functions > Import Universal Donations. Our support team would need to set up an individual custom template for each donation source in your Silent Partner.
If you would like to import donations from other sources, please contact our support team for further steps: support@silentpartnersoftware.com.
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