Collecting regular/recurring donations and transactions through Donorfy

Follow

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...

Essential and Starter Plans

 

Stripe and GoCardless payments are automated – you don’t need to do any processing at all! Use the File Uploader to add payments to Donorfy and link them to an RPI Add payment to the Timeline and link them to an RPI

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.

 

Professional and Enterprise plans

 

Stripe and GoCardless payments are automated – you don’t need to do any processing at all! Direct Debit tools (your own Direct Debit clearing) All other Regular Payments Collection Types, e.g. Standing Orders Use the File Uploader to add payments to Donorfy and link them to an RPI Add payment to the Timeline and link them to an 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.

 

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

Donorfy_Professional_Image_for_Support_Guides.jpg

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

  1. Set up your Collection Method and associate a Payment Method to it.
  2. Open the Constituent Timeline and click on the Add button. Select the option of Recurring Payment Instruction
  3. Complete the following:
    1. RPI Header
      Start Month
      Collection Day
      Collection Method
      Frequency
      Currency
      Reference (this will show in the EFT Batches for matching)
      Acknowledgement 
    2. 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
    3. RPI Allocation section
      Campaign
      Amount
      Product
      Fund
      Department
  4. A connection can also be added, as can a Beneficiary

 

Going Deeper Guides

 

Recurring Payment Instructions section, including:

 

Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) section, including:

 

Reporting on RPIs - Analysing & Reporting on Recurring Payments

 

Recurring Payment FQAs - check out these nuggets of info: Recurring Instruction (RPI) FAQs

 

 

 

Comments

0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Powered by Zendesk