The payments record type in Beacon shows the payments coming in to 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 linking other records such as which fund it contributes to, the campaign that helped raise the money, relevant grants, memberships, even the event that a payment was taken at.
link Creating a payment record
Payment records can come from several different places. Many will be automatic (efficiency win!), and some will be manually created.
link Automatic payment records
Most of your donations will probably be coming from a Beacon-powered donation form. These donations will create a payment record for each transaction, and automatically fill the relevant fields with information.
Payment records are also created by integrations from Stripe and GoCardless for your recurring payments scuh as regular donations and membership fees, as well as from iZettle when taking mobile payments out and about.
link Manually adding payments
For payments that you need to create yourself in Beacon, you can either add them individually, or if you have many payments stored electronically you can import them in bulk.
link 1. Individual payment creation
You can create payments from either:
- The Payments record type, with the Add payment button.
- Any related record card showing payments, such as on a person record. Just click the '+' button in the corner. It will automatically link the payment to that record (in this case the donor).
You can fill in as much or as little information as you need, and click the Create button. Payment entered!
link 2. Bulk payment creation
When you have a lot of payments to enter, it can be much quicker to import them from a spreadsheet.
Use your CSV file to create an import template, making sure you select Payments as your record type.
Tip: If you're importing from a giving platform such as JustGiving or Virgin Money Giving, there may be a preset template ready to go!
You can then run your import and create the payments all at once.
link Working with your payments
Let's take a look at a few ways that can make your work easier