How to import your data from Donr into Beacon

Donr are a great UK-based SMS donation service that lets you easily create and manage text giving campaigns. You're only a few steps away from importing your donation data from Donr into Beacon using our pre-built import templates.

There are three templates available, and it's best to use them all to bring in the relevant data available from Donr:

1. Payments
2. Subscriptions
3. Gift Aid declarations

If you haven't already, you can familiarise yourself with the general import process here.

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link Before you start

Before creating your templates and starting to import payments, you'll need to tweak a couple of fields so that the data from Donr flows in correctly.

help_outline Tip: You'll need to be an admin to make these changes

Payments

• Add 'Donr' to the 'Source' field
• Add 'SMS' to the 'Payment method' field

Subscriptions

• Add 'Donr' to the 'Source' field
• Add 'SMS' to the 'Payment method' field

Gift Aid declarations

• Add 'Donr' as method
• Create a new short text field named 'External ID'

link Download donations from Donr

We will handily use the same exported spreadsheet from Donr for all three of our imports into Beacon.

1. Log in to Donr, and navigate to 'All Donations'
2. Filter for the donations you'd like, and click to download a CSV of 'Successful Transactions'

error_outline If you open the file in Excel to edit this spreadsheet, be sure to format the phone and date columns before saving again. See here for details.

link Importing payments

error_outline Make sure you've already updated your fields before creating your Donr import templates.

The first step is to import the donations as Payments in Beacon.

1. Create a new import template, and choose the Donr - Payments template. Click 'Create'.

2. The template settings have already been pre-set. Feel free to review them and make the appropriate changes - and then save the template.

3. Go to Import data > Run import. Upload your CSV from Donr, and start the import. Once the import is finished, you'll see this:

link Importing subscriptions

The second step is to import any regular giving information as Subscriptions in Beacon.

1. Open your spreadsheet, and delete any rows where the 'billfrequency' is 'oneoff' (this will leave just recurring payments)

error_outline If opening in Excel, check that your phone number and date fields are formatted correctly

2. Save as a new CSV file (keep the original)
3. Create a new import template, and choose the Donr - Subscriptons template. Click 'Create'.

4. The template settings have already been pre-set. Feel free to review them and make the appropriate changes - and then save the template.

5. Go to Import data > Run import. Upload your newly amended CSV from Donr, and start the import. Once the import is finished, you'll see this:

help_outline If you get an error about duplicate values for 'Phone number as subscription ID', you can safely ignore it (it's because there's multiple payments for the same person). For best accuracy, run this import at least monthly.

link Importing Gift Aid declarations

The last step is to import any Gift Aid information as Gift Aid declarations in Beacon.

1. Open your original spreadsheet, and delete any rows where the 'giftaid_date' is 'NULL' or blank (this will leave just payments that have Gift Aid declarations)

error_outline If opening in Excel, check that your phone number and date fields are formatted correctly

2. Save as a new CSV file
3. Create a new import template, and choose the Donr - Gift Aid declarations template. Click 'Create'.

4. The template settings have already been pre-set. Feel free to review them and make the appropriate changes - and then save the template.

5. Go to Import data > Run import. Upload your newly amended CSV from Donr, and start the import. Once the import is finished, you'll see this:

help_outline If you get an error about duplicate values for 'External ID', you can safely ignore it (it's because there's multiple payments for the same person). For best accuracy, run this import at least monthly.

check_circle_outline You've imported your donations, as well as linking them to people and creating a subscription record for anyone giving regularly. Not only that, any Gift Aid eligible payments have been added and are ready to claim! I reckon it's time for a cuppa.

link Frequently asked questions

link What formatting do I need to do to the spreadsheet?

Excel has a habit of changing the format of the date and phone number columns in the spreadsheet to try and be helpful. To make sure your import works smoothly, format the columns as follows before saving:

1. Select the 'msisdn' (phone number) column, and change the format to '0' by going to Format > Cells... > Custom > 0
2. Select the 'payment_date' and 'giftaid_date' columns, and change the format to '2012-03-14' by going to Format > Cells... > Date > 2012-03-14 (or YYYY-MM-DD)

link How do I know which donors we can contact?

As part of importing, Beacon automatically sets donor's 'Contact preferences' to 'Phone' and 'SMS' for any that had consented to contact when they made their donation via Donr.

If the donor was already in your database, we will have updated their record to include these contact consents.

help_outline Tip: To find anyone with one these preferences, filter People for 'Contact preferences is any of: Phone, SMS'

link Why haven't some declarations been linked to a person?

Donr don't provide the full phone number for anyone that hasn't consented to marketing information from you, so there is no way to link to these people from an import.

If you'd like to link these payments and their declarations to the same blank Person record manually after import, you can! The matching Gift Aid declaration and Payment should both have the same 'External ID'.