Create an easier way to manage sustaining cards about to expire
I’ve been working on something that I would expect to be fairly simple for the past few days for a client and I’m still not able to deliver her what she needs. The issue is trying to find a group of cards that are about to expire. The client is trying to identify cards +30 days from expiration so they can plan outreach to those donors and have them update their cards.
There are a few problems. One is that the report writer report date filter for expiration date does not allow a static setting, like 30 days from today. It, in fact, doesn’t seem to have any format for the date, although there must be one. It’s a date field after all. However, every format I tried to guess returned no results. When I talked with Support, they indicated query was really better for this anyway, which I also tried and struggled with. I’m guessing there is a problem with my parameters and they are fact checking it for me but it’s really been a struggle. For example, when filtering out ACH, ACH still appeared. When adding an expiration date, cards that were outside that were still delivered in the results. With an increased priority on sustaining programs, making the management of sustainers easier for admins would be helpful.
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Guest
- Jun 9 2015
- Already exists
| Area of the Product | Reporting |
| Org/Company Name | Blackbaud |
Related ideas
I think we could still work to make query easier. It's quite obtuse and really aligning with SQL queries, not the strength of the average user.
I would add that it could be helpful to revisit how to easily address things like isolating certain tender types. For example, you have to specify first or last transaction tender type. But what if you wanted to exclude all ACH? That would be a helpful scenario to support.
For sustainers specifically, maybe it would be most appropriate to just build that group for outreach "expired sustainers" so the query tool would not have to support its creation.
Thanks!
Also, my query brought up PayPal donors, but when I look at an individual record (see RE ID 241778) it does not show the expire date. Does Luminate has that data in the background somewhere, so I can trust it? If not, I suggest a way to exclude anyone without an actual expire date.
One thing to make query easier: be able to specify cards that expire in month of X and year of Y. So for example, I could request everyone expiring in Aug 2015. There could be a drop down for year and month.
Hi Ken,
I just tried this with your clear (thank you!) example but ran into two issues: first time it gave me over 2000 people, most of whom were NOT sustainers (we only have about 800 sustainers total). So I added a clause = had to have 1 or more plans eligible for processing. That brought the list down to 145, yet the first few I checked were people who had already expired. Please feel free to login to The Marine Mammal Center's Luminate and take a look at my query= Expiring Credit Cards. For an example of an id that came up but was already expired, see Convio ID 1068566.
Dale
I'm going to mark this as Already Exists again however if people post ideas on what changes they'd like to see made to make this process easier I'd be happy to change it back to Future Consideration. Thanks!
Ken
Hi all,
I changed this to Already Exists a while ago but didn't have a chance to provide an explanation of how to configure in an easy way to target a group with an email letting them know their credit cards were about to expire. Here is how you do that:
You do use the query tool > Create new query > Add Field Type of 'Sustained Giving Information' > Add Field of 'Card Expiration Date' and click Add Field Clause > In popup window choose 'Falls on or before' and the 'Relative' option. Add the number of days 'beyond' today that you want to pull into a group and hit save.
That's the basics of how to get a group filled with constituents who have a sustained gift with credit cards about to expire in the timeframe you provided.
Now you set your recurring email up. Below are two screenshots to help you out. If you don't see Sustained Giving Information in query tool then you'll need support to make those options visible for you.