I am looking to restructure our Campaigns, Appeals & Sources so that our data is in the proper places and reports can properly be pulled. Has anyone ever done so once a fiscal year has already been started?
Example - Currently we have 5 Campaigns in which 2 of them should actually be Appeals, we also have a 09/10 or 10/11 in front of each Campaign in which i feel is irrelevant as i can specify this right in the Appeal.
I'm looking for any advice anyone can give me on this subject, or possibly sharing the process of how you currently structure yours so that your data and reports properly function.
Thank you.
It depends a lot on how you work and want things organized. There are probably dozens of reasonable and logical ways to decide to do it.
Regarding your specific example, we do usually have the year in the name of the campaign, since campaigns have fyears but appeals don't. Sometimes the year is in the appeal name as well, depending on the appeal, which makes any instance of appeals in a dropdown easier to sift through. I know lots of orgs have very different levels of how specific they get with appeals, so what makes sense to me might be useless for you.
Then again, since the campaign can have an fyear associated with it, I can see why you might find it redundant to also put the year in its name. Mostly though I find, especially on the appeals screen, from a sorting perspective, it's usually handy that the campaign has the year in the name so it's easy to find "current" appeals. But again, depending on how you actually want to see things laid out in reports, that might not be the most logical arrangement for your org.