[bgardner]

Is it possible to save an individual letter (not done through the batch process) to a constituent's records so it can referenced when pulling them up?

[Andrew Gorczycki]

you copy and paste to general notes or action notes (which will be my preference) or through media tab however I would advice use link to external file in established shared area for that purpose rather then saving to RE database

Andrew GorczyckiGuggenheim

[Mary Ann Brunette]

We are having issues with completing a batch of thank you letters automatically out of RE. The letters come out great, but they don't attach to the gift records of the donors, nor do they change the "Unacknowledged" field to "Acknowledged". Has anyone found a way to do this easily?

[Melissa Siobhan]

Run Donor Acknowledgement letters from MAIL and as you run them you willbe asked - do you want to mark these gifts as acknowledged.

If testing or playing around - say no. If this is your final run of the letters you can say "yes" and the gifts are marked as acknowledged on today's date.

Melissa

[andrea.bbbs]

Yes - be sure to keep saying "No" to the Acknowledge question. I finally had to write a change record query in Admin to "un-acknowledge" gifts by batch because I kept having to test my letters over and over again.

[Melissa Siobhan]

Yes, Keep saying no as long as you are tesking and setting up your letters. Once they are set up and you are running letters you can say yes.

[EJohnson]

We run acknowledgments through Mail in a batch and have not currently been linking to the record.

The letters are stored permanently on a shared drive in a file with the other letters that were processed the same day.

Are other users taking the time to separate the letters and to link them to the records? We are not sure we want to change our process but are interested in what other organizations are doing.

Thanks

[Mary Ann Brunette]

That is why we are purchasing PaperSave to attach documents more easily. It takes up a lot of time otherwise. We plan to install PaperSave by year end.

[Melissa Siobhan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EJohnson

We run acknowledgments through Mail in a batch and have not currently been linking to the record.

The letters are stored permanently on a shared drive in a file with the other letters that were processed the same day.

Are other users taking the time to separate the letters and to link them to the records? We are not sure we want to change our process but are interested in what other organizations are doing.

Thanks

In my opinion it is usually a waste of resources to try to link them all. You have them electronically stored and know where they are and can find them in the occasion that you need them. It is a very rare occurrence that I have ever needed them again after printing and mailing - if it were a regular (daily/weekly) occurrence that I would reference their acknowledgment then I could see dedicating the resources but currently - no.

Would you do this for every appeal letter, newsletter, pledge reminder and invitation you send? I do not feel it is necessary to try to use the database to capture the full details of every communication with donors. I feel that you need to record only the fact that something was sent and the nature of the communication. For very complex documents like contracts and grant proposals we attach them electronically to their record but beyond that - no.

[nisaac]

We've looked at papersave also. At this point, we would need a little more benefit to purchase it. Currently we scan each day's mail to a pdf file. This file is annotated by each department as it passes through the review process. At the end the file is saved in an archive. Another non-annotated (private info blackened out) copy is stored in a location available to our directors.

We can always find the checks/documents etc by looking at the mail date. We also keep a copy of each day's acknowledgement letters. Our data entry personnel enter from the pdf using two monitors.

[Mary Ann Brunette]

Our director is wanting us to load all the old hard copy files into RE by scanning them with PaperSave. We are going entirely paperless. Hopefully, once the hard work is done upfront, it will be easier in the end. Has anyone heard of any stories of people doing this? We rarely go back into historical info.

[Peter Gulka]

I did this at a bank I used to work for. We scanned all the historical mortgage files. For a bank with multiple branch locations it was indispensible once it was completed. I highly recommend going in that direction.

We were even able to develop the processes and procedures so that the scans were admissible in court as original documents. If a bank can manage that, I'm sure the rest of us can too.

[EJohnson]

Thank you all so much for taking the time to reply so far! I really appreciate all the information I can take back to my director!

[EJohnson]

Thank you all again for taking the time to respond -
We have decided not to link the letters on the records and to continue storing the documents permanently on a shared drive in a file with the other letters that were processed the same day.