It’s easy to collect and manage recurring/regular donations or membership subscriptions with Donorfy’s online payment gateway integrations and financial processing tools for 3rd party sources, such as, your bank account statement downloads or Direct Debit processor.
This guide explores
- Regular Payment options available
- How it works
- Requirements
- Quick start guide
- Going Deeper Guides
Regular Payment Options
Donorfy’s online donation tools
We connect with industry-leading payment processors Stripe and GoCardless so your donors can securely set up a regular payment with their credit or debit card (continuous card payment) or by Direct Debit.
This collection process is fully automated by Donorfy, which takes care of the communications process, too.
An overview of how each of these online donation tools works and how to set them up can be found from the following links below:
- Donorfy Forms
- Stripe Web Widget
- GoCardless Web Widget
Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) and Batch Transactions process (Professional Feature Only)
Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) is the process of collecting funds on a regular basis from your constituents’ accounts into yours. There are various forms of EFT, including:
- Standing Orders,
- Committed giving via charitable giving platforms (CAF, Stewardship, etc),
- Direct Debits, etc,
All of the above options follow a similar workflow.
Typical uses are for regular donations and membership subscriptions. Donorfy contains all the information required to collect funds and also handles communications with the constituents.
The Donorfy EFT solution has the following features:
- Regular Payment Instructions (RPIs), such as Standing Orders or Direct Debit instructions, can be entered or imported and lodged with the payment provider
- Multiple Collection Types can be used simultaneously
- Monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly payments can be collected
- Upgrades can applied to RPIs
- Constituent communications can be sent by letter and email
- Collect as often as you like - daily, weekly, monthly, annually
- Manage failed transactions
- Post successful transactions
- Integrated with Gift Aid
- Summary statistics are updated
- Regular payments uploaded to Donorfy linked to an RPI
Regular Payments added to Donorfy directly to Timeline or via the file uploader
This process bypasses the EFT process and allows payments to be manually keyed onto a Constituent Timeline or uploaded using the Donations File Upload template and linked to an RPI. This is great for migrating data or adding multiple payment types from different collection methods or adding bulk payments where no references can be matched as part of the EFT process. However, it should be noted that this process does not update the summary statistics for the RPIs.
How it all works
A Regular Payment Instruction (RPI) will need to be added to your constituent’s timeline for a donation or a payment of a subscription or membership.
An RPI is basically a payment plan and contains the details of the amount, frequency (monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annual basis) and preferred collection date for a particular method.
On the RPI, you define various other elements to ensure that the correct payment process is imitated, the payment is distributed to the correct Campaign, Fund and Product, and, of course, the details to ensure the payment is collected at the right time.
Once the RPI is created, the process here splits depending on the Collection Method and your Donorfy plan...
The Process can be summarised as below:
All regular payments that are created by our online payment forms (Campaign Donate Pages and Donorfy Forms) will be added to your Donorfy automatically, and the collection day will be set by the process*.
On the collection day (and in line with their frequency), the automated process will send a payment request to the payment gateway (Stripe or GoCardless).
The payment is then processed in line with the payment gateway timelines:
- Stripe – collection, payment and pasting back to constituent timeline occurs on the same day
- GoCardless– see the below timeline:
From Donorfy to GoCardless
Collection sent from Donorfy | Notice received by GoCardless | Payment created in GoCardless | |
Day | 0 | 0 | 1 |
**Day 1 onwards will be working days and will not include weekends or bank holidays
From GoCardless to the Bank
Sent to bank | Debited from account | |
Day | 2 | 3 |
From Bank to GoCardless
Sent back to GC | Funds in your bank | |
Day | 4 | 5 |
GoCardless back to Donorfy
Sent to Donorfy - >4pm | On Constituent Timeline | |
Day | 6 | 7 |
*Donorfy Forms do not prompt the donor for a preferred Collection Day. Instead, for new RPIs added via a Form, Donorfy will work out the soonest Collection Day for the first payment and uses that - subsequent requests will be initiated on the same day (Collection Day), and so will be debited from their account, on (or just after) the same day it was debited previously (subject to weekends, the BACS cycle, etc.).
The transaction amount and references are then passed back to Donorfy and on to the Constituent Timeline.
A Donations file is Uploaded to Donorfy. The File Uploader will then use the data (Constituent ID, External Key, email address, phone number) to match to existing contacts in your Donorfy. The process will also use the RPI Number in the file to match to an RPI for that constituent.
Once the file is matched, the data is then applied to Donorfy – this will add a Transaction to the Constituent Timeline and link that transaction to an RPI (if an RPI Number was provided).
Please note:
This process does not update any summary statistics for the RPI. This means that when payment is missed and the RPI's status becomes Overdue, if the RPI is still active it will need to be set as Active from within the RPI
A Donation can be paid directly onto the Constituent Timeline and then Linked to the RPI using the Linked Recurring Payment Instruction field.
Please note:
This process does not update any summary statistics for the RPI. This means that when payment is missed and the RPI's status becomes Overdue, if the RPI is still active it will need to be set as Active from within the RPI
The Process can be summarised as below:
All regular payments that are created by our online payment forms (Campaign Donate Page, Forms and Web Widgets) will be added to your Donorfy automatically, and the collection day will be set by the process*.
On the collection day (and in line with their frequency), the automated process will send a payment request to the payment gateway (Stripe or GoCardless).
The payment is then processed in line with the payment gateway timelines:
- Stripe – collection, payment and pasting back to constituent timeline occurs on the same day
- GoCardless– see the below timeline:
From Donorfy to GoCardless
Collection sent from Donorfy | Notice received by GoCardless | Payment created in GoCardless | |
Day | 0 | 0 | 1 |
**Day 1 onwards will be working days and will not include weekends or bank holidays
From GoCardless to the Bank
Sent to bank | Debited from account | |
Day | 2 | 3 |
From Bank to GoCardless
Sent back to GC | Funds in your bank | |
Day | 4 | 5 |
GoCardless back to Donorfy
Sent to Donorfy - >4pm | On Constituent Timeline | |
Day | 6 | 7 |
*The Donorfy Forms and Web Widgets do not prompt the donor for a preferred Collection Day. Instead, for new RPIs added via a Form or Web Widget, Donorfy will work out the soonest Collection Day for the first payment and uses that - subsequent requests will be initiated on the same day (Collection Day), and so will be debited from their account, on (or just after) the same day it was debited previously (subject to weekends, the BACS cycle, etc.).
The transaction amount and references are then passed back to Donorfy and this is then applied to the Constituent Timeline.
When using your own Direct Debit processor, the stages following stages are undertaken using the Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) and Batch Transactions process:
- Use the EFT process to create and lodge the instructions with the constituent’s bank – this is a process which creates a CSV file for you to download and upload to your payment provider.
- Any failed lodgements can then be manually applied back to the RPI
- Run the Cancelled RPIs process – this is a downloadable CSV file and will need to be uploaded to your payment provider.
- Create your download file and Batch of Transactions using the EFT process – the CSV file can then be uploaded to your Direct Debit payment provider
- When you receive a confirmation report from your payment provider of the successful transaction – this can then be uploaded to the corresponding Batched Transactions in Donorfy. This will then match payments to those expected in the batch. Once completed the batch is posted and the Transactions are recorded on the Timeline, the summary stats are updated overnight.
These will be manually batched using the Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) process, which is outlined below:
For each particular Collection Method, a Batch of Transactions will need to be created using the EFT process.
- If you have a payment file, such as a bank statement download or a statement from CAF or Stewardship, you can upload those payments to the corresponding Batched Transactions in Donorfy. This will then match payments to those expected in the batch.
- Any non-matched items can be paid off manually within the batch. Or the whole batch can be paid off manually at a click of a button if required – i.e. you do not have a payment file that can be used or the batch is a small one.
- Once completed, the batch is posted, the Transactions are recorded on the Timeline, and summary stats are updated overnight.
A Donations file is Uploaded to Donorfy. The File Uploader will then use the data (Constituent ID, External Key, email address, phone number) to match to existing contacts in your Donorfy. The process will also use the RPI Number in the file to match to an RPI for that constituent.
Once the file is matched, the data is then applied to Donorfy – this will add a Transaction to the Constituent Timeline and link that transaction to an RPI (if an RPI Number was provided).
Please note:
This process does not update any summary statistics for the RPI. This means that when payment is missed and the RPI's status becomes Overdue, if the RPI is still active it will need to be set as Active from within the RPIA Donation can be paid directly onto the Constituent Timeline and then Linked to the RPI using the Linked Recurring Payment Instruction field.
Please note:
This process does not update any summary statistics for the RPI. This means that when payment is missed and the RPI's status becomes Overdue, if the RPI is still active it will need to be set as Active from within the RPI
A few days into the start of a new month (usually the 7th of the month) the Regular Payments process will check through the payments received in the prior month, and where a payment was missed then the RPI will be updated as follows:
- The number of missed payments is increased by one
- The month and year of the last missed payment is updated
- The number of consecutive missed payments is updated - i.e. how many payments have been missed in a row
If an EFT batch has been raised for the prior month and has not yet been posted, the associated RPIs will still show as a missed payment and the consecutive missed payments will be increased by one.
When the batch is posted, then both the missed payments and consecutive payments will remain as such until the calculation occurs again the following month, at which point the number of consecutive missed payments will be reduced by one, e.g. From 1 to 0.
If an EFT batch has not yet been created, and subsequently created, paid and posted after the missed and consecutive payments have been calculated, then both the missed payments and consecutive payments will remain as such until the calculation occurs again the following month, at which point the consecutive missed payments will be reduced by one.
Consecutive missed payments will mark the RPI as Overdue. These overdue RPIs, which are still ‘active’ and not lapsed, will need to be reset manually to be Active.
Requirements
The use of the EFT process for the payment of RPIs is a Professional and Enterprise-only feature. Essential or Starter plan subscribers, please contact us to find out more about upgrading.
Quick start guide
- Set up your Collection Method and associate a Payment Method to it.
- Open the Constituent Timeline and click on the Add button. Select the option of Recurring Payment Instruction
- Complete the following:
- RPI Header
Start Month
Collection Day
Collection Method
Frequency
Currency
Reference (this will show in the EFT Batches for matching)
Acknowledgement - RPI Payment section
Campaign
Amount
Starting - this is the date that the payments are to be made from (the 'go live' day). Next Collection will date back to the Start Month of the current year.
Ending - if to end on a certain date, set the date here
Channel
Reference - RPI Allocation section
Campaign
Amount
Product
Fund
Department
- RPI Header
- A connection can also be added, as can a Beneficiary
Going Deeper Guides
Recurring Payment Instructions section, including:
- Collection Methods - Collection Methods
- Adding - Adding and updating Recurring Payment Instructions (RPI)
- Pausing - Pause an RPI
- Increasing - Increasing an RPI (RPI Upgrade)
- Cancelling - Cancelling a Recurring Payment Instruction and Cancelling an RPI paid by GoCardless
Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) section, including:
- Collection Methods - Collection Methods
- Overview - Handling your own EFT using Donorfy
- Exporting RPI for Lodgement with your Bank - Exporting new RPIs for lodging with your EFT Institution
- Paying off RPIs via an EFT Batch - Collecting & Reconciling Money paid by EFT and Reconciling Bank Statements to an EFT Batch
Reporting on RPIs - Analysing & Reporting on Recurring Payments
Recurring Payment FQAs - check out these nuggets of info: Recurring Instruction (RPI) FAQs
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