How to Use Barcodes for Faster Gift Entry in Raiser’s Edge

Does your organization receive large volume direct mail gifts? Are you still entering these gifts manually into batch? Barcodes can streamline your gift entry into Raiser’s Edge, giving you back valuable time to focus on other important tasks.

Barcoding gift remittance slips, membership forms, and phonathon forms can speed up processing. On your gift remit slip or phonathon form, you can include a barcode for the constituent ID only, the Appeal only, or the constituent ID/Fund/Appeal combined into one barcode. On a membership form, you can code the constituent ID and/or the member ID.

To create a bar code in database view, go to Mail > Appeal Cards. This Knowledgebase article outlines the process. When you’ve created the code there, add the barcode to your piece as needed. If you are sending a list out to a mailing house, add the code as a column in that file. You would use an Excel lookup function to match the barcode file with the mailing list file, so be sure Constituent ID is included in the Appeal Card export. This Knowledgebase article details more about configuring the codes.

Before the first gift comes in, purchase a barcode scanner. They are very inexpensive and well worth the investment to save valuable time entering gifts. This Knowledgebase article talks about what scanners are supported.

When it is time to enter the gifts into a batch, add the Gift Barcode field to your batch setup. If you have one barcode for constituent ID/Fund/Appeal, you will simply click in the Gift Barcode cell of the batch, scan the barcode on the remit slip, and watch the constituent ID, Fund, and Appeal automatically fill in. If your remit slip has a barcode for constituent ID and a barcode for Appeal, you will simply click the corresponding cell in batch, scan, and the ID or Appeal fills in.

While barcode usage is not currently supported in web view, it is on the list of possible upgrades. For everyone wanting more efficiency, we don’t want it to be a possibility, we want it to be a certainty. Please vote on this idea in the RE NXT Idea Bank to bring barcode usage to NXT grid batch gift entry: “Ability to add gifts in NXT by scanning a barcode – very important!”