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Sustainer Pledges and Payments

This topic includes the following information:

• Concepts
• Creating a Sustainer Pledge and Payment Schedule
• The Sustainer Payment Schedule Tool
• Editing a Sustainer Payment Schedule
• Deactivating (Canceling) a Sustainer Pledge
• Reactivating a Sustainer Pledge
• Processing Sustainer Pledges by using Sage Payment Solutions (SPS) Processing
• Sustainer Payments Table Column Descriptions
• Sustainer Payments Table Indices

Concepts

The Sustainer Payments table is a secondary table whose rows will be attached to a primary Gift Transaction row, which has a Transaction Type of Sustainer Pledge (sp).

Sustainer pledges are characterized as open-ended promises in which the donor commits to donating a specified amount on a defined schedule, for an indefinite time period, and therefore, for an unspecified total amount. Each Sustainer Payment row contains the information for a payment that is anticipated for a particular day and month each year. For example, if payments are expected every month, twelve Sustainer Payment rows will be created and linked to the original Sustainer Pledge transaction.

The Sustainer Payment rows may be used to produce reports showing the timing and amounts of expected donations. If your institution chooses to do so, they may also be used to create pledge reminders to be sent to the constituent.

Creating a Sustainer Pledge and Payment Schedule

When you enter a giving transaction with a Type of Sustainer Pledge (sp) and an amount of zero, the system will prompt for the creation of a schedule of the payments that the institution expects to receive as a result of this type of pledge. You may create one payment per month for any set of months, and may assign any amount for each of those payments (in accordance with the donor's wants). Those amounts can vary from payment to payment or be the same amount for each. For each scheduled payment, the system will generate a row in the Sustainer Payment table. Once these rows have been created, you may edit the dates, the amounts, or the billable status of individual rows that have already been created, or you may delete any of them. You may also create additional payment rows if the schedule calls for payments more frequently than once a month.

1. Access an Insert, Default form, or Fast Data Entry form for the creation of a Giving transaction row. Enter a transaction type of Sustainer Pledge, and enter an amount of 0. Enter all other data as appropriate for the transaction.
2. Click Insert. The Sustainer Payment Schedule tool will display.
3. Type in the payment amount in the Monthly Payment Amount box. For any month in which the expected payment amount will differ (the same amount is not expected every month), type the different amount in the box to the right of the name of the month.
4. If you do not want to generate pledge bills for the payments, then clear the Billable check box.
5. If the due day for each payment is a day other than the first of the month, type in the correct due day in the Monthly Bill Day field.
6. For any month in which no payment is expected, clear the check box to the left of the name of the month.
7. When all data has been entered, click Finish. The system will verify that any months that are activated also have an amount and return a prompt if you have overlooked that situation. If you click Cancel at any point, the system will create the Sustainer Pledge transaction, but without a schedule of payments.

Only one row per month can be created by using the Sustainer Payment Schedule tool. Each payment will be due on the same day, and each will have the same billing policy. But you can edit the schedule after it has been created to add additional payments within the same month, to vary the payment due days, and to change the billable policy on one or more of the scheduled payments.

The Sustainer Payment Schedule Tool

Use the Sustainer Payment Schedule tool to display and to edit scheduled payments. Access the tool by using the Payment Schedule button in the lower left of the display of the Sustainer Pledge. Each existing Sustainer Payment is shown in a single line list. Each line consists of three pieces of information, the Due Date, Amount Due, and Billable flag.

• Due Date - The date on which the Payment is scheduled to be paid, and the time after which your site should expect to receive the scheduled amount. Note that since there is no scheduled end date for this type of payment, the dates include only a month and day. It is assumed that payments will be expected every year at that time.
• Amount Due - The expected amount of the Payment.
• Billable? - This flag indicates whether a pledge bill should or should not be generated for the Payment. If you cleared the Billable check box when you created the Sustainer Pledge and Payment schedule, then the Billable? flag is 'off' (the check box will not be selected, and no bill for the payment will be sent) for each payment.

The Sustainer Payment Schedule tool includes the following action buttons.

• Delete - There is one Delete button for each scheduled payment. When clicked, the payment will be removed from the schedule. You will not be able to confirm your intention to delete a Payment before it is removed from the Payment schedule tool, but changes to the payment schedule itself (in the database) will not be permanent until you click Finish.
• Add Payment - This button is used to add additional payments to the schedule.
• Finish - This button is used when edits have been performed on the existing payment schedule and you are ready to accept all of those edits and commit the changes to the database.
• Deactivate - This button will display only if the Sustainer Pledge is Active. It is used to cancel the original sustainer pledge transaction. More:

  When Deactivate is clicked, the system will automatically change the status of all existing Sustainer Payments in this schedule to N, which in turn will change the Billing status of those payments to N. In addition, the giftstatus field of the sustainer pledge transaction is set to N.

• Activate - It is used to re-activate a canceled Sustainer Pledge, and it will only if the Sustainer Pledge has been previously deactivated. More:

  When Activate is clicked, then system will set the giftstatus field of the sustainer pledge transaction to <blank>, the status of all Sustainer Payments on the pledge is set to Y, and the Billable status for each of these payments is reset to Y.

• Cancel - This button is used to close the Sustainer Payment Schedule tool without saving any edits that have been made since it was opened.
• Sort - This button is used to sort the payments in Due Date order (from first Due, to last). It is especially useful as you add and remove payments from the Sustainer Payment Schedule tool.

Edit the Sustainer Payment Schedule

(Note that editing the Sustainer Payment schedule is not the same as posting a Sustainer Payment Transaction. Posting Pledge Sustainer Payments (creating a linked Transaction) is carried out via the Post Payment Icon (the check) on the display of the original Transaction. The Sustainer Payment schedule is edited via the calendar icon in the lower left corner of the display of the Transaction.)

1. Access the Giving Detail display for the constituent who owns the original Sustainer Pledge and then locate the specific Sustainer Pledge Transaction.
2. Click the Payment Schedule button (located directly under the common information for the sustainer pledge, and above the information for the first allocation).

   You can use the Transactions menu if that is your preference. Point to the Edit button to the left of the Sustainer Pledge Transaction. Point to Transactions. Click Payment Schedule. The Sustainer Payment Schedule tool displays.

3. Edit each payment as you want.
   1. Any Amount Due can be edited by typing a new or different amount.
   2. Any Due Date can be adjusted by typing in the desired month and/or day.
   3. The billing policy for the payment can be changed by toggling the Billable? check box.
4. Click Delete to remove a Payment from the schedule. You will not be able to confirm your intention to delete a Sustainer Pledge Payment before it is removed from the Sustainer Payment Schedule tool, but changes to the payment schedule itself (in the database) will not be permanent until you click Finish.
5. Additional Payments can be added to the schedule by clicking Add Payment. Complete the payment details (Due Date, Amount Due, Billable?) as needed. Notice that the labels for the payments that you have added to the schedule will be in bold to indicate that they are new.
6. Click Sort at any time to sort the payments in Due Date order (from first Due to last). This is especially useful as you add and remove payments from the Payment Schedule tool.
7. Once the payment schedule appears as you want, click Finish.
8. At any time, you can click Cancel to close the Payment Schedule tool without registering any changes.

Deactivate (Cancel) a Sustainer Pledge

1. Click the Payment Schedule button (located directly under the common information for the sustainer pledge, and above the information for the first allocation).

You can use the Transactions menu if that is your preference. Point to the Edit button to the left of the Sustainer Pledge Transaction. Point to Transactions. Click Payment Schedule. The Sustainer Payment Schedule tool displays.

2. Click Deactivate.

Reactivate a Sustainer Pledge

1. Click the Payment Schedule button (located directly under the common information for the sustainer pledge, and above the information for the first allocation).

   You can use the Transactions menu if that is your preference. Point to the Edit button to the left of the Sustainer Pledge Transaction. Point to Transactions. Click Payment Schedule. The Sustainer Payment Schedule tool displays.

2. Click Activate.
3. Once a Sustainer Pledge is reactivated, all of the payments are become billable. If you do not want to issue billing statements for one or more of these payments, then you must re-display the Sustainer Payment Schedule tool, clear the Billable? check boxes, and then click Finish.

Process Sustainer Pledges by using Sage Payment Solutions (SPS) Processing

When running SPS Pledge Processing, all sustainer payments are selected for processing from January to the current month. Therefore, it is important that you specify a date range when processing sustainer pledge payments. The date range that you specify must limit the sustainer payments that are selected to be in the current month in which they are due. If you do not specify this date range, then the Pledge/Sustainer Payment Processing tool may create and process more payments than are due. Review the Sage Payment Solutions topic for more information.

Sustainer Payments Column Descriptions

Sustainer Payment schedule data is stored in the sustainerpayments data table. The following columns are included. The column labels and non-displaying designations that are listed here are those that the system uses by default. If you want to override these default settings, you must customize your display definition.

Note: Custom fields are included in the data table, and are available for any purpose that you want to define. These fields are not shown on the standard Display or standard Data Maintenance forms. If you want to make use of one or more of the custom fields, use the Custom Display Designer to edit the standard Display and Data Maintenance forms.

Indices - Sustainer Payments

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