In Beacon, your admin can create custom record types to store almost anything you need to keep track of. In this section, we're going to look at record types that are already there when you create a Beacon account. While some of the more niche ones may have been hidden by your admin, we're going to take you through the 4 most common record types and how to use them.
Your admin may have renamed these record types. If you can't see these in your sidebar, ask your admin to locate them for you.
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'Out of the box' record types:
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People
The people record type in Beacon is the heart of most accounts. It's where you'll store everyone involved in making your organisation a success - donors, fundraisers, beneficiaries, volunteers, members... the list goes on!
A person record stores all the information relating to them personally (like name, contact details, interests, date of birth, job title). It will also show any related information that is pointing to this person (such as payments made, events attended, subscriptions set up). It's your hub for seeing how someone fits into your organisation.
To read more about the people record type, click here!
link Organisations
Most charities work with organisations as well as people. Beacon makes it easy to keep track of organisations and to store all the directly relevant information like contact information, organisation type, plus related records like grants, payments, campaigns and people who are connected to the organisation. This record type is so straightforward that we don't even have a guide article about it.
link Payments
The payments record type in Beacon shows the payments (income) coming into your database from all sources, whether they be donations, memberships, recurring gifts, ticket sales, grants, or from any other place that your organisation fundraises.
Payment records reflect a transaction, such as a £50 cash donation, or the April payment of a recurring membership, and can store a wealth of information (pun intended). From basics like amount, relevant dates, payment method, to pointing to other records, such as which fund it contributes to, the campaign that helped raise the money, relevant grants, memberships, and even the event that a payment was taken at.
To read more about payments, click here!
link Subscriptions
A subscription reflects the fact that someone is paying you regularly. It is not a transaction in any way - so it will not exist as an item on a bank statement. The specific payment transactions will be stored separately as Payments (above).
Outside of the CRM world, good examples of subscriptions are things like:
- A £9 / month Netflix subscription
- An £80 / year Amazon Prime subscription
- A £12.56 / month TV license subscription
In Beacon, subscriptions are most useful for reflecting:
- Auto-recurring donations (e.g. £10 / month)
- Auto-recurring membership fees (e.g. £90 / year)
To read more about subscriptions, click here!
link Other available record types
The following is a list of other record types which are currently available, to read more about them, click here
- Major gifts
- Memberships
- Grants
- Funds & Campaigns
- Campaign members
- Events
- Event attendees
- Volunteer applications
- Tickets
- Tasks
- Cases
- Legacies