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Importing Donors and Donations

If you were using some other software to track your donations and are switching to Donarius® you do not have to re-enter your donors or donations.  You can transfer the data from your previous software into Donarius®. (Click here for a list of some programs you can export from.)

(We can import your data into Donarius® for you at no extra charge - just call us or send us an email.)

Here is how to do it:

1. Convert your donor and donation data into delimited text files.  You can have a comma, semi-colon or TAB as a delimiter. You will usually have to start up your previous software and select "Export" from one of the menus.  Export your donors to one file and your donations to another file.  If possible with your previous software, include the field names in the first line of each of the text files.  (Click here for a list of fields Donarius® will accept.)  Consult the documentation for your previous software to find out how to export data. Instructions on exporting from Microsoft® Excel, Access and Word are here.

2. Start up Donarius®.

3. Check the organization setup if needed:
a) There are two ways to import donor types. Enter all the donor types you were using in your previous software or have Donarius® automatically create the ones it finds in the import file.  To enter them, click the Church or Organization icon.  Then add the names and abbreviations for each donor type, to match those you were using in your previous software.  When you are importing donor types, if a new one is found you will be asked whether it represents one you have already entered or whether it should be added.
b) There are also two ways to import donor characteristics,  Enter all the characteristics you were using in your previous software or have Donarius® automatically create the ones it finds in the import file.
c) To import the category of each donation using category names, check that Donarius® has the same names you were using in your previous software.  You can also have your categories automatically created using the names in your import file. (see item #11 below)
d) To import the category of each donation using a number which identifies the category, you have three ways to do it.  You can put the category number as part of the name, in parentheses. For example your previous software may have used 1001 for the General category.  If so then change the name of the General category to be General (1001).  When importing donations choose Category Name for the field that has the category number since you have put the category number in the name.  Another way applies only when your category numbers are small values.  ie. less than 10. In this case check that the category numbers used in your previous software match the category ID numbers.  (To see the category ID number select a category name then choose Edit. You will see a dimmed number at the bottom left of the dialog box.)  If they don't match then create a few new categories and check their ID numbers, until you find one that has the correct ID number and change it's name.  The third alternative is to have your categories automatically created using the ID in your import file. (see item #11 below)
e) To import donations for "Loose Change" or "Loose Offerings", your previous software should have a donor it uses to record "Loose" donations.  The name of the donor should have the word "Loose" in it.  ( Contact Nuverb Systems Inc if you have any difficulty importing "Loose" donations.)

4. Click the word Import near the bottom left of the main window.  You will be asked to choose the file to import from.  On the bottom left of the window, choose the type of delimited text file you are importing from.  You have a choice of TXT, CSV (Comma Separated Values) or WS files. You must import the donors before the donations so choose the file that has the donor data and click OK or press Enter key.  Later, when you are finished importing the donors, click Import again to import your donations and choose the file that has the donation data.

5. Indicate the type of data you are importing - either donors or donations.

6. Specify what to do with the data. You can:
a) Delete all the current data and replace it with the data from the imported file.  When you replace donors with data from an imported file all the donations will be deleted first.
b) You can add the data to the end of the file.  When importing donors one of the fields in the imported file should have a donor # or an envelope # so that Donarius® can check for duplicate donors.  If neither of these are in the imported file, the donor's name will be used to check for duplicates.
c) You can update the current data with changes from the imported file.  You must have a donor #, envelope # or name field in the imported file for this to work.  Then each donor in the import file can be found and other fields changed.  For example if you have each donor's phone number in a separate file you could create a delimited text file with two fields: donor # and phone number so you could update the phone numbers in Donarius®.

Note: When importing donations a donor #, envelope # or name field is always needed so that the donor whose donations you are importing can be found.  Also, check if your donation file has any donors who have more than one donation on the same date, to the same category.  If this is the case, then to import all such donations you should click on the checkbox:
  Multiple donations by a donor on the same
  date, to the same category, will be allowed

7. The first few lines of the text file will be shown.  You can see more lines by clicking on the Up or Down buttons.  Each line is divided into five columns so that one field is in each column.  When the import file has more than five columns click on the <<== or ==>> buttons to see the other columns.  Look at each column and choose the field name corresponding to that column. If the import file has the field names in the first line then Donarius® will try to guess which fields you are importing.  When the import file has a column that cannot be imported then choose Ignore for the field name.  You should not choose the same field name for more than one column.  There are some exceptions to this.  For example, you have two columns of dates with the same type of data in two different formats. (Click here for an explanation of the fields that Donarius® will import.)

8. Choose the format of dates in all columns.  Usually you can set it to Automatic to recognize any of the date formats listed. When importing donations you should have a column with the date of the donation. If there is no date column, then give the date of the donations where it says Donation Date.

9. When importing donations, if you do not have a column for the payment method, you can indicate the method where it says: Payment Method.

10. When importing donors, if they all have the same type of receipt (yearly or one per donation) then choose the type.  If each donor has a different type of receipt, then choose Receipt Type for the field name of one of the columns, select the radio button Use the receipt type column, where and type the character that is in the import file for each type of receipt.

11. When importing donor types or donor characterisitics the column can be either a name or a single letter/digit abbreviation.  For an abbreviation check off the box that says Donor Type or Characteristic is an Abbreviation.  When you have several characteristic names in a single column, indicate what separates each one. When each characteristic name is on a separate line, choose New Line.

12. Sometimes there are extra columns in your file that should be ignored.  Rather than going to each column and selecting Ignore, click near the bottom right where it says Ignore remaining columns.

13. When importing donations, your file may have a repeating pattern of columns for donations on different dates.  You can repeat the last group of column selections by entering how many columns to repeat where it says:
 Repeat the last [  ] columns until the end.

14. Click the Import button to import the data. When importing donors, if you did not choose Donor Type for any column then you will be asked whether it is OK to set all donors to the first donor type.  When importing donations, if you did not choose Category Name or Category # for any column then you will be asked whether it is OK to include all donations under the first category. If your import file has the amounts for each category in a separate column, then simply choose Amount for each column.  You will then be asked if it is OK to include the donations in successive categories.  To automatically create the categories using the category names or numbers in your import file, check off Add new categories to list.

15. After importing donors check that they were imported correctly.  Click the Donors icon and choose Add/Edit Donors.... After importing donations check them by clicking the Reports icon and choosing Donations By Date.... Click on One donor per page, choose the dates you imported, click on the Day radio button and click OK or press the Enter key. Then press the Page Up or Page Down keys to see the donations for each donor.  (You can also click on [Next] or [Previous] in the menu bar.)

16. Please notify Nuverb Systems Inc about any problems you are having importing donor or donation data.




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