How to import Monthly Data

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Tim Posey

How to import Monthly Data

Post by Tim Posey »

I am not with one of the ministries that you support in the importing of data, I am wondering how difficult it would be for our ministry to send me a file that I could import to update my giving records. Can you point me to some information or give me a brief explanation of what they would have to do in the office to be able to send me the file that I need.

Thanks,

Tim
tposey@finalfrontiers.org
jmuehleisen
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How to import Monthly Data

Post by jmuehleisen »

Tim,

Thanks for your message.

If your organization distrubutes your monthly giving data in some electronic form, I can often write a giving import routine for you. In fact, I'm working on several right now for other organizations to include in the next update.

How easy it is depends on how the data is sent to you. Of course, with the DM being a database program, getting the data in some "database" format makes my job a LOT easier. For example, if it comes in Excel format (with the data in rows and columns), or a "comma separated text" format, or a .dbf format, or something like that, I data import routine can often be written in 15 or 20 minutes.

If it comes to you "preformatted" for easy reading (say, as a Word document, RTF document, or the body of email message, it is often a lot trickier. Some of these formats take hours to write an import routine for, because basically I have to take the formatting out and get it back into some type of row / column format.

Now, if your organization's IT staff is open, I'd be glad to give them some ideas on how they could write a "DM friendly" data file. Basically, any row/column style file would work great (eg: Excel, csv, dbf). If can include the data like this, it's just wonderful:

donor_id, donor_last, donor_first, donor_title,address,city,state,post_code, country, gift_date, gift_amount, gift_receipt_number

Those are the things that the DM processes when bringing in monthly contributions.

So, having said that, if you do get your data electronically, send a sample to me at john@donormanager.com. Confidentiality of your data is assured. I'll take a look at it and see what I can do.
John Muehleisen
Mentoring Emerging Christian Leadership in Africa for Excellence / Integrity / Innovation
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