• Replies 5 replies
  • Subscribers 413 subscribers
  • Views 198 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Pledge Billing Schedule and Summary

Krystal Parsons
$organization

We have a monthly giving program for our theatre, and we're running into problems trying to build this in Tessitura. We can schedule payments and run the pledge billing utility successfully manually, however, when we try to automate the utility, we've run into several problems:

 

  • Constituents being charged more than the scheduled amount if they've had a failed payment previously. (For Example: Two failed monthly payments of $90, resulted in the constituent being charged $270 at once, rather than the regular $90 a month. I'm guessing this was because our cut off date. Any recommendations on how to determine a better cut off is much appreciated.)
  • Charging more pledges than we ever see on a daily basis (8x as many as normal)

Parameters for dates were:

  • Start Date: RunDate
  • End Date: RunDate
  • Cut Off Date: DayRunDate -1

Our goal is for the pledge utility to automatically run daily. Any specific advice on these issues or any information you'd like to share about how you run your own monthly giving programs through pledge utilities in Tessitura would be great to hear. Thanks! 

 

 

 

'

  • $organization

    Hi Krystal,

    Here's a typical arrangement for our billing schedules.

    Pledge Start Date = DayRunDate -30

    Pledge End Date = RunDate

    Prev Billing Cutoff Date = DayRunDate +1

    The Pledge Billing utility is going to charge whatever is due up to what's set in the End Date parameter. If you want to avoid charging delinquent accounts, you could adjust the billing schedule for a contribution to make it more current.. There are other ways to achieve the same result, but that would be my first thought.

    I recommend checking out the report help. It does a good job of explaining how the utility works in general.

    Matt

  • Former Member
    Former Member $organization

    Hi Krystal,

    We run ours only on the 15th with the following settings:

    Start Date: BgRunMonth
    End Date: EnRunMonth
    Cut Off:  RunDate

    The end date controls what will be billed. Tessitura will always bill any previous due amounts. You will have to identify people with failed payments and remove the missed scheduled payments or change the scheduled date to prevent them being charged for missed payments the next time they're billed.

    Your Cut Off Date of Day-1 would exclude anyone who was billed yesterday. I think you would be fine with RunDate in all three places. 

    I'm not sure why you're seeing 8x more than you usually do. Is it billing people $0? Or it may be charging missed pledges.

    Hope that helps.

    Ann

  • $organization

    Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate it! 

  • Former Member
    Former Member $organization in reply to Krystal Parsons

    Hi Krystal!

    We're preparing to move into automated Pledge Billing as well. So far, my live test is working okay, but I'm hoping to hear an update from you (or anyone else who is running Pledge Billing Auto Run more than 1x/mo) on how it's been going, pitfalls, successes, etc.

    Thanks!

    Corinne

  • $organization

    We run the pledge billing on the 1st and 15th of each month.

    I have schedules for FY19 and FY20 for the 1st and the 15th because of receivables and straddling fiscal years.

    So for example, I have the following schedules running at the same time:

    • FY19 Indiv 1st of the Month
    • FY19 Indiv 15th of the Month
    • FY20 Indiv 1st of the Month
    • FY20 Indiv 15th of the Month

    When I enter a pledge, I set each payment to the 1st or 15th of the month - that way I don't  have to use variable data and hope that the report picks up the payment I want.

    When someone misses a payment, I do follow-up with them as best I can to ask them for new card info, to extend the payments, or to make a catch-up payment. If they want to extend, then I adjust the payments to the month they want to re-start payments.