Helpful Transaction Lists

Hello! In this lesson, we’re going to build a few helpful lists of transactions. Since the lists you’ll need will be based on your organization's unique strategies, the goal of this lesson is to provide a few quick tips that will point you in the right direction.

Because Funraise lists are dynamic, they’re great for recurring workflows. By dynamic, we mean that items can fall into or out of the list based on the filters you’ve saved.

Before we jump in, it’s important to note that creating lists is the simplest way to organize your transaction data in Funraise, but it’s not the only way. If you’re looking for more complex filtering functions or want to configure the view of your reports, definitely check into our custom reporting feature called Fundraising Intelligence.

Alright, let’s get this party started!

In this lesson, we'll build the following transaction lists…

• Transactions this month
• Campaign Transactions
• Pledge forecast, and 
• Ad campaign tracking
  

Transactions this month

For our first list, let’s say we want a quick view of how much we’ve raised this month.

Start by adding a filter for status = complete. Important side note: Funraise’s transactions section contains transactions of all statuses, including failed transactions. What that means for you is that in most cases, you’ll want to start your list by filtering for status = complete so that your lists reference successful payments.

Next, add a date filter. Rather than an exact date, you can add a relative, or magic date, of this month. 

After we apply these filters, we’ll be looking at successful transactions that occurred this month—and we’ll be ready for our monthly reporting meeting!

Now, give this list a name... and save it.

Campaign Transactions

For our next list, let’s say we’re running a specific campaign and need a list of all the donations to this campaign. There are a few ways to accomplish this—but let’s take the easy road.

Assuming you created a page on your website and embedded a specific giving form on the page, you just need to add a filter for that giving form, and Boom! List created.

But let’s break it down:

• Start by adding a filter for status = complete
• Then add a filter for the giving form… search and select the giving form… and click apply. 
• Now you can see what you’ve raised through this campaign.
• Give this list a name... and save it.
  

Pledge forecast

Next, let’s talk about pledges and major gifts management. There’s enough here to fill several lessons, but in this example, we’re going to start with the basics. 

A big part of major gifts management is forecasting and collecting on pledges made by your major donors. As you may already know, you can track donation pledges by creating an offline transaction and marking it as a pledge—and you can mark the pledge as received when you get the money.

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to set the date for your pledges based on when you expect the commitment to be fulfilled.

Let’s assume you’re building a list to forecast pledge fulfillment for Q4 of 2020.

You’ll need 4 filters: 

• First, filter for pledge = true
• Next, add a status filter for pending. Every transaction has a status and a pledge that has not yet been received has a status of pending.
• Next, set the date range for the expected fulfillment dates. By adding two date filters, we can specify a custom range, first for dates after or equal to Oct 1, and...
• Then a filter for dates before or equal to Dec 31.
  

Upon applying these filters you’ll see all the pledges that are expected to be fulfilled in Q4 of 2020. This list shows us potential donations we need to be focused on as well as helps us forecast expected revenue.

There’s a lot more you can do with pledges, but hopefully this example provides a quick guide.

Ad campaign Transactions (UTMs)

Finally, let’s build one more list to check in on our marketing department. If you’re running ads on Facebook or Google, you need to know if the money you’re spending on ads is actually inspiring donations and how much you’ve raised through your ad campaigns. 

Advanced example warning! There are a lot of ways to measure the ROI of your marketing campaigns. For example, you could pass donation data back to an ad platform using Funraise Giving Form Event Handlers, which is probably what your marketing would prefer.

For now, let’s talk about how you can build transaction lists with UTM data inside Funraise. We’re not going over UTMs in this video, but basically, they’re the five url parameters that enable tracking of online marketing performance across sources and campaigns.

This example assumes your team is using UTMs correctly.

When UTM data is available with a Transaction, the data is visible on the transaction profile and can be used with transaction filters.

Let’s start with Source = Facebook. 

When you apply this filter, you’ll see Transactions that occurred after a donor was directed to your site from a link on Facebook.

Say you ran a specific ad campaign with a budget of $500 on Facebook. You can add a filter for UTM Campaign and enter the campaign name.

When you apply these filters you’ll see the amount actually raised from your ad campaign.

It’s worth repeating, so we’ll say it again: there are many ways to monitor marketing influence. Tracking UTMs with a transaction list is the most basic way to see marketing campaign performance.

That’s a wrap! Hopefully, this lesson provided a few helpful tips and ideas. See you soon.