January 2020 Release Notes

We know that January isn't really time to catch your breath, it's time for getting year-end giving statements out the door. We've got some new features to make the process a little easier.

First, for those organizations trying to manage multiple receipt templates, we've added filters to the receipt management screen.

And for those of you planning to send year-end statements by mail, we've made a change to give you control over the return name and address to be printed on your envelopes, should you select that option. This also means that you can leave the entire return address blank, in case you have pre-printed envelopes already.

We've also added a new merge field, "Total Fair Market Value", which will calculate the total of the fair market values of all premiums associated with receipted gifts.

For those of you receipting via email, you'll no longer have the option to include unsubscribe links, and unsubscribe links will not be added automatically, since receipts are transactional emails and not subject to CAN-SPAM regulations. This helps ensure that your donors will continue receiving their email receipts.

In addition to all these improvements, we've also given the mail receipt editor a little polish. Happy receipting!

Ever wished you could quickly undo a change when editing an email?

Good news! Your wish just came true.

Look in the lower left corner when working in the email editor to select the undo icon and reverse your last edit.

But that's not all! Click on the timeline icon and you'll be able to see the change history for your email.

Use this feature to undo several recent changes all at once, and go back to a previous point in your email.

Give it a try!

We know that many of you have users who manage a portfolio of donors, or who act as the primary point of contact for a specific group of supporters. Organization Groups offer a great way to track these relationships, but what about the Best Calls list on the dashboard? Users who are restricted to seeing ONLY their donors also see only Best Calls for their donors, but what about staff who are not restricted?

Now, you'll see a new option when inviting or editing users. When adding a user to an Organization Group, you can set them to have no restrictions, to be limited to Contacts in their Group, or filter the Best Calls by Group. The best of both worlds!

Hey, look, being #1 is great and all, but we're not elitist around here. That's why we are showing a little love for second place.

When editing a Contact, you'll now have the ability to define both the Primary AND the Secondary Individual. Since Secondary Individuals are often included in email communications, this way you can ensure your messaging is reaching the right people.

With this change you'll no longer see the option to set an Individual as Primary when editing the Individual; both settings are now shown only when editing the actual Contact record.

Using the Reversing Transaction gift type to cancel out existing Gifts is generally the preferred method for correcting data errors, but it can be tricky to know exactly which Gift is being cancelled out. Worse, these transactions can still show up on giving statements.

So we made things a little easier.

Now, click on the three dots in the upper right when viewing the giving data on a Contact record, and you'll see a new option to "Add reversing gift."

Click to bring up a new form, where you can enter a date and type in the ID for any Gift you wish to cancel out. 

The Gift data will be displayed, allowing you to confirm that the correct Gift is being selected. Only Gifts from the Contact you are viewing can be reversed in this way. The original Gift and the linked Reversing Transaction also will not be displayed on receipts or giving statements. Use this feature to keep a more accurate audit trail for gift entry corrections, which is always exciting! Right?

Now that our Double the Donation integration allows for all Gift imports to be scanned for potential matching Gifts, we've made it easier to set up the integration, even without a Virtuous Giving account. 

If you haven't set up the integration yet, you'll see this prompt in the upper left when you visit the Gift & Contact Import page. Go ahead and give it a spin. I mean, who doesn't want to raise more money?

As with every release, this month's update also includes a number of other fixes, tweaks, minor modifications, and assorted nudges. Among this month's assorted fixes:

And that's the list! As always, if you have any questions about these or other features, feel free to contact our team using the support widget in Virtuous, or drop us a line at support@virtuoussoftware.com.