|
|
|
New Features in
version 5.40 / 41 |
Version 5.40 adds beta support for Evangelical Free Church of
North America giving statements, YWAM Tyler Texas, and Arab
World Ministries.
In addition, the gift importer for WBT giving statements can
now handle the "CC" code for credit card contributions.
Version 5.41 adds support for Ameritribes and fixes a bug in
the Arab World Ministries gift importer.
|
New Features in
version 5.38 /9 |
Version 5.38 adds support for the new contributions statement
from the Assemblies of God, and fixes a few cosmetic bugs.
Version 5.39 includes support for contributions statement
changes from World Gospel Mission and Heart of God ministries.
It also includes a number of general enhancements to the gift
processing routines, and adds the ability to include receipt
numbers and larger currency amount in manually entered
contributions.
|
New Features in
version 5.36 / 7 |
Version 5.36.00 is a public
release of the Donor Manager. Here are some highlights of new
features in this version.
Version 5:37 is an update to
5.36 that includes support for the new WBT HTML Giving
Statements, plus some other minor bug fixes.
I have rewritten quite a bit of the "gift import" routines and
have added support for quite a number of additional
organizations. Most of them are quite stable, and a few still
have a few problems. , so, if you run into any problems, be sure
to let me know! (support@donormanager.com).
In addition, there will be a few new reports and few more
enhancements to the program, but the major work is in the gift
importing routines.
New in this release:
- The program should recover more gracefully to "sharing
violation" errors that are caused when the DM tries to open
a file that is already open in Word or Excel.
- I've still be working on the "personalized bulk email
sending" routines, but they are simply not stable enough yet
for me to "unleash" them on you!
- fixes to several organizational gift importing routines.
- better handling of leading zeros in donor id numbers
(all organizations that use donor id number)
- I removed redundant buttons on the "Touch" and "Special
Days" tabs
- This version adds a new screen titled "Giving Analysis"
on the "Gifts" tab. This routine runs some interesting
statistics on your giving for particular date ranges.
- When doing manual gift entry, you can now update the
"Fund ID" list and the "Gift Motive" lists "on the fly" in
the middle of a gift entry transaction.
- If you are doing automatic gift posting, the Fund IDs
and Motive Codes found in a contributions report will be
added "on the fly" to the Donor Managers fund and motive
code lists.
- Added the ability to specify equivalent names for your
home country, e.g.USA = U.S.A., United States, EEU, etc. In
addition, I made the home country reference more generic.
It no longer assumes that USA is your home country
- Exporting from the Partner master file now includes
family info in the export
Reporting Improvements
- This release modifies the spacing problem on the 5160
mailing labels that caused "label creep" on some printer
models
- New Report: Date of the last touch (/Reports /Other
Reports): This report show you the date of the last contact
/ touch with this partner.
- Several reports have been modified to be more readable.
In particular, reports that include data from the "more
information" tab have been changed so that address updates
stored on the "more info" tab do NOT appear on the reports.
- adds a "Preview" and "Print" button to the mailing
labels page. (Previously one button took you to the preview
and then you printed from there)
- adds a "Next" button when previewing contribution
imports ... saves a step
- I have finished the monthly giving report with 12 month
analysis report (/Reports /Monthly Giving Reports /Monthly
Giving Report with Trailing 12 Giving Analysis). This
report has been on the menu for a long time, but wasn't
finished. It should be working OK now. Suggestions on how
to make this report better would be welcome.
- A new "prospects" report to the prospects review page.
- I rewrote the single envelope routine. You can now
specify a special printer driver to use when printing single
envelopes. Set this on the /Personalize /Single Envelope
options /Specify printer driver. Also, you can now choose
between two envelope sizes: a "standard" # 10 envelope, and
a smaller "card size" envelope. Select the size you want at
/Personalize /Single Envelope Options /Select Envelope Size.
- There is a new report that lists "unthanked" gifts.
This is handy for keeping up with your thank you notes and
emails. If you haven't been marking gifts as thanked in the
past, obviously this report will be quite long. On the pull
down menus, try the /Tools /Mark all gifts as thanked
routine to give yourself a fresh start. This report is on
the Reports /Other Reports screen.
New Organizations with this release (and their status):
- Wycliffe Associates - testing
- Wycliffe UK - testing. Very close
- World Team - testing
- OMS International - finalized
- Evangelism Explosion - stable
- AIM International - testing
- Partners International - stable
- Operation Mobilization - finalized
- United World Mission - stable
- E Free Church USA - testing
- E Free Church Canada - testing (close to final)
- Send International - testing
- World Gospel Mission - support added for the new Excel
format being released in mid-2006.
Feedback on these is appreciated. If the program will not
import your gift file, please send a sample of the file that is
not working. That will help me a lot!
Also, keep in mind that organizations frequently update their
contribution report formats, so test a current contributions
file, plus one from a while back as well.
What's Coming
The next release of the Donor Manager will involve a
significant change that you need to be aware of. The program is
currently written using Microsoft's Visual FoxPro program,
version 6. Visual FoxPro version 9 was released late last year
and I will be switching the program over to this new version as
my next major project.
I don't anticipate that this conversion will take me long to
do, and the first release written in Visual FoxPro 9 will
probably not add many new features. Once I switch to VFP 9, then
I'll begin adding new features again.
The first download of the new version will be about 10 mb as
you will need to install about 8 mb of "runtime" support files
the first time you install this next version.
If you have a good internet connection it will be no
problem. Even on a dial-up connection, this is generally
manageable, depending on where you are. WBT staff will see this
new version eventually on their software library disks, but if
you will be needing a CD to install this new version, I'll
provide a way to request a CD to be mailed to you once we get
closer to the release date.
I'm also working to add new features to the DM to make it
work a bit better in an organizational setting, as opposed to
the individual setting. If you have interest in this, please
contact me by email at:
john@donormanager.com and let me know what you'd like to see
added to the program to make it more useful to you. In
addition, I have set up a special section on the
Donor Manager forum to discuss this.
Donor
Manager:
support development software for those who raise their own
support
www.donormanager.com
support@donormanager.com
Version 5.33 is a public release.
Most of the enhancements in this version were tested in the 5.32 beta
series. Below are a list of the new features in this version.
This version was released publicly on 29 May 2005.
- New: when printing mailing labels, you can now specify a
name or zip code range. This makes it easier to pick up the printing
after a jam or mis-feed.
- New: the "send newsletter" field is now available on the
"browse full screen / Lists and flags" screen
- Enhancement: when reviewing churches & people associate
with the church, the list of partners within a church is now sorted
alphabetically. This change was also applied to the associated
report
- Enhancement: When using the "Pack and Go" routine, the
default file name now includes the date, eg:
'december_25_2004_donor_data.tza'.
- this report adds the salutation information (Dear ...) to the 3
column report. This comes in handy when writing personal notes
on letters to more easily know the first names of your partners.
- this release makes a change in how the address update routine
handles countries. It now recognizes that "United States, USA,
U.S.A., EEUU, E.E.U.U." are essentially synonymous.
- Also, a bug that sometimes caused a crash when returning from a
backup was fixed (hopefully!).
- this update adds additional options for printing "one at a time"
envelopes directly form the partner details screen. I've added
3 more options that hopefully will better support printers that feed
from the top or back. I'll need feedback from those of
you who use printers of this type to tell if additional changes need
to be made here.
- this release fixes a bug that often caused a crash when reindexing
- on the "list statistics" page, I have added percentages to show
what percentage of your entire list is on that particular list.
- I've done significant work on the WBT UK gift import tool,
although it is still in testing.
- Significant work has been done on the Mission Society for United
Methodists gift import tool. This is also being tested by some
MSUM staff before being released publicly.
- this release adds www.streetmap.co.uk as a map provider for UK users
- I've done a lot of work on the personalized email sending
engine, but I'm not quite ready to add it to the menu.
The interface will probably show up in the next beta or two, but the
actual sending engine will be disabled until I get the details
worked out.
- This update fixes (I hope) a bug that caused an error when
returning from creating a "pack and go" file.
- This release fixes a bug on the "Gift Review" page that caused a
crash when changing the year.
- I have fixed a bug that prevents data from showing on the
"partners" page. Note: a change in the code to support
international users makes a short delay when opening the "partners"
tab. Let me know if this delay is objectionable to you.
- New: additional work has been done on implementing
"cents" in gift tracking. Cents are now tracked in the gift
history (although not displayed ... just not enough room for all of
those extra zeros). They will be shown, however, in the giving
review and (eventually) on some of the gift reports.
- New: Gifts cents can now be entered in the manual gift
entry
- New: For international users, there is now an option to
show the partner's country in the partners listing. I don't
have this implemented everywhere yet. Turn this option on in
/Tools /Personalize /Editing Options
- New: The program now regenerates the "monthstat.dbf" file
each time it starts. This should eliminate the "error reading
record xxx error" on startup
- New: When doing a gift review, if you click <thank> and
have "add a touch" checked, the program now includes the partner
name in the touch file (it didn't before).
- New: If a user is using international style addressing,
this now shows up on the manual gift entry screen.
- Note: There is still a lot to do in fully implementing
this giving detail data and a lot of reports willl need to be modified
or expanded. Your feedback and bug reports are very helpful here.
However, once I get comfortable with the data structures, I'll probably
release this update and then work on additional implementation in the
next release.
- This release adds additional functionality to the giving detail
routines. They are still a "work in progress" so don't depend
on the "giving details" screen. But, by all means report bugs
or suggestions for what you'd like to see here.
- New: If you edit a contribution in the gift history
grid, the changes you make here will now be reflected in the giving
detail list. Let me know of problems that you find here.
- Fix: prior to this version, if you reposted some
gifts, the program would post them correctly to the giving history,
but would double post them to the giving details. I think that
I have this one fixed now.
- Fix: When doing manual gift entries, the program
now remembers the exact date of your previous entry. Prior to
this fix, it would always return the gift date to the first of the
month.
- Note: In the new giving detail list, you can edit
the receipt number and the motive and fund codes. You cannot
edit the gift amount or the gift date. Likewise, you cannot
add gifts here.
- this release fixes a bug in the "pick font for labels" routine that
caused a crash.
- The user's preferred currency symbol is used on the gift
confirmation screens for manual gift entries.
- this release adds access to this document via the Main Menu
screen to make it easier for people to keep up with what's new in
each release
- This fixes a cosmetic bug on the church's screen: a
missing "v" index.
- The "select font for mailing labels" now supports Bold, Italic,
and Bold Italic.
- A revised format for the "personalize" menu
- You can now specify the font used for mailing labels if you want
to override the default of Tahoma 8
- The "dear" field is now exported to "envelopedata.xls" with
generating envelopes.
- A bug when leaving the "touches screen" (this command requires
buffering) has been fixed.
- You can now specifiy a "default" country that will be added to
all new records. In addition, you can fill in the country
field of all records with a blank country field with this
information with one click.
- A new table has been added to track individual contributions (as
opposed to just monthly totals. This feature is very
rough right now and is subject to significant change as we go
through this beta cycle. Please don't invest much time with
this file until it's final design is finalized.
- Transactions including cents are now tracked
- For each contribution, you can also track a source or "motive"
for the gift to follow the effectiveness of a specific appeal, and a
"fund" or "account designation." At this point, there are not
reports that analyze this, but they will be developed as we go
along. Feedback is invited on this point
- Support for UK style addressing: Set this on /Tools
/Personalize /Editing Options
- The screens for updating the "codes" tables has been updated.
- Several bugs were fixed from 5.31.
|
New Features in
version 5.31 |
Version 5.31 was released on Friday, July 30, 2004.
Here is a partial list of the new features in this update:
- Tracking of Thank Yous: the Donor Manager
now allows you to track whether or not you have said "thank
you" for a particular gift. On the "Gift Review
Screen" (new in version 5.30), there is a new checkbox by
each contribution titled "thanked". When you have said
"thanks" for that give (by email or by letter or phone),
simply put a check mark there. If you wish, you can
filter the gift list showing only those where a thank you is
pending. In addition, you can mark all gifts as
"thanked" with one click.
The tracking of "thank yous" also is carried back to the
partner details screen. If you look on the "giving
history" tab, gifts that are currently "un-thanked" appear
with a yellow background. You can mark all gifts
"thanked" for one donor from the giving history screen with
one click, or you can mark ALL gifts for ALL partners
thanked by choosing "Mark All Gifts as Thanked" from the
pull down /Tools menu.
I have more enhancements planned here in the future, and
your input and suggestions are invited.
- Enhanced Smart Find: I've had a lot of
positive comments on the smart find feature that was
introduced in 5.30. In 5.30, you could preface a find
with *, and it would search in just about every field for
you. Now, you can put any punctuation mark
(period, comma, etc.) at the beginning of your find
expression, and it will trigger the extended smart find.
It saves that odd "Shift-8" keypress.
- Last file locations remembered: the program
now remembers the last location you looked for contribution
reports, photo files, and pack and go files. There are
more enhancements like this planned for the future.
- WBT Gift Processing: further enhancements
have been made to this routine.
|
New Features in
version 5.30 |
Version 5.30 was released on Thursday, July 15, 2004.
Here is a partial list of the new features in this update:
- Advanced filtering Options: the program has new,
significantly enhanced filtering options available
throughout the program. You can now filter on most of
the significant data fields in addition to the previously
supported partner type and user definable lists. You
can now include / exclude individual states, cities,
denominations, interest levels, countries, partner types,
etc. It is very, very powerful. Once a
filter has been defined it can be saved and used again very
easily. You're going to like this one! When a filter
is in effect, the program shows you how many names meet the
filter condition.
- More Information tab: On the partners
detail screen, there is a new tab added to the bottom half
of the screen titled "More Info." This screen will
allow you to keep unlimited custom data items for your
partners. You determine, on a partner by partner
basis, what to keep here. You specify the
"description" of the data, and then the information item
itself. Some ideas on what to keep here:
-
more e-mail addresses. Enter as many as you like,
and indicate if they are "live"
-
more web site addresses
-
Instant messenger handles
-
family information
-
for churches, worship service times, other staff
-
more phone numbers, pager numbers, work numbers, etc.
- Smart Find: The find routine has been
significantly enhanced. In previous versions, you
could enter either a partner number or a few letters of the
partner's "sort name" and the find routine would try to find
the records that you were looking for. Now, if you
preface your search word with *, the program will look in
almost all data fields for that information. So, if
you type in *phil (it is case insensitive), it will
find Joe Phillips, Philip Smith, Harvey Hamilton in
Philadelphia, and Bill Smith whose plays for the New York
Philharmonic. Very nice. This smart find box is
on the "home" page, at the bottom of the partner details
page, and on the "browse full screen" page.
- Live Update: The Donor Manager now has the
ability to check for updates over the internet, and
automatically download and install these updates for you.
Simply click on "Live Update" from the Donor Manager "home"
page / main menu while online. If a newer version of
the program is available, it will offer to download it and
install it for you. If your version is up-to-date, the
program will tell you that as well.
- More Information tab: On the partners
detail screen, there is a new tab added to the bottom half
of the screen titled "More Info." This screen will
allow you to keep unlimited custom data items for your
partners. You determine, on a partner by partner
basis, what to keep here. You specify the
"description" of the data, and then the information item
itself. Some ideas on what to keep here:
-
more e-mail addresses. Enter as many as you like,
and indicate if they are "live"
-
more web site addresses
-
Instant messenger handles
-
family information
-
for churches, worship service times, other staff
-
more phone numbers, pager numbers, work numbers, etc.
- Automatic address updating from contributions
reports: If you are using the automatic
contribution posting routine, the program now adds another
step to the process. It will look for differences in the
addresses that you have in your partner file and the
addresses that you receive on your contributors report.
You can review each difference and decide on a partner by
partner, field by field basis whether or not update your
data from the giving report data, or whether to keep your
data. In addition, you can optionally tel the program
to update all of your address info automatically based on
the HQ data. If an address change is made, the
Donor Manager records the previous address info in the "more
info" file in case you need to refer to it in the future.
- Better handling of multiple e-mail addresses:
if a partner has multiple email addresses, the Donor Manager
now allows you to specify which address you would like to
use (or all of them if you wish) when sending an email.
- Review Contributions: A new screen has been
added on the Gifts tab titled "Review Contributions."
On this tab, you specify a month, and the program gives you
a simple list of the contributions that you received for
that month. You can quickly address envelopes or send
emails directly from this page, making it easier to thank
your supporters. (Coming in a future version:
the program will track whether or not you have "thanked" the
partner for a particular contribution).
- New Report: A new report has been added to
the partner lists that has 3 columns, and is a very
condensed summary of partner information.
- Pack and Go: A new routine to make it easy
to transfer donor manager data from one computer to another
has been added, called "Pack and Go." This allows you
to "pack up" your donor data files into a single, compressed
file (similar to a zip file) and then transfer that data to
another computer by diskette, CD, e-mail, USB drive ...
however, and then quickly and easily install that data set
onto the other computer. (Note: the
current version does not support two-way synchronization
between computers. That is coming in a future version).
- Improvements to the backup routines to make them
more robust.
- New feature:
Pledge Source Analysis: on the
Partner Detail screen there is a new field titled "Pledge
Source." It is at the bottom of the screen just below
pledge amount. This field can be used to enter some
information on how you got this pledge. It can be used to
analyze the effectiveness of various approaches in support
development, and is especially designed for WGM staff (who give
a report on this information. In addition, on the Support
Development tab there is a new screen titled "Pledge Source
Analysis." This tab does a summary cross-tabulation
of this information, and give the option of producing a report.
The codes for the pledge sources can be defined from the "Update
Codes" option of the home page.
- Redesigned
www.donormanager.com website: the Donor
Manager website has been redesigned and a significant amount
of new information has been posted. In addition, a
user's forum has been added to support discussion on topics
related to this program as well as support raising in
general. Also, a number of links have been added to
other resources on the internet to help you develop stronger
relationships with your ministry partners.
- If you have extensive notes about a partner, you can now
double click in the notes field and it will zoom to a much
larger window for ease of editing.
- If you run the program in less than full screen mode, it
will now remember your settings from session to session.
- New "right click" menus were added to the program to allow you to /Copy
/Cut /Paste /Select All in most data fields.
- Support for currency symbols has been added. The program
now supports dollars, euros, and pounds sterling.
- The "Import Names and Addresses from Excel"
tool has been further enhanced.
- There are now two providers for the "map this address"
routine from the partners detail screen. The program can
give maps from Yahoo or Mapquest. Indicate your preference
on the Tools /My Information /Other Information screen
- The program now supports longer phone numbers for
international dialing prefixes, etc . This will allow 25
character phone numbers
- The program now supports 3 letter state names (for
Australia). Further support for non-US addressing
styles is coming in future versions.
- In addition, there are a number of smaller cosmetic and
general usability enhancements.
|
|
