I'm going ahead with it. Actually, pledge processing is actually pretty involved. My client has hundreds of sustainers who pledge by bank draft or credit card each month. Things to consider include: - entering lots more stuff on the pledge entry side, like credit card or bank account number, name on account, which month to bill, expiration date, bank name, etc. Add some validation to make sure no critical info is missing that will prevent pledge from being accepted - decide which pledges get billed each month based on things like; bill date is between pledge start and end date, pledge status is open, bill date less than credit card expire date, should it get billed that month if it's a quarterly pledge, credit card number and expire date are valid, installment amount is not less than amount owed on pledge, etc. - for the processing, produce a report of transactions, generate the appropriate text file of transactions with special header information to send to the bank, post records to payments_ and link them to the correct pledge records. - typically, a few percent of the tranactions are rejected (accounts have closed, credit card number has changed, acccounts are overdrawn, etc.) so you want to manually roll back those transactions and put a pause on that pledge. Then you want to call those people up and get the pledge going again (get a new credit card #, etc.), maybe enter a manual payment to bring the pledge up to date, maybe adjust the pledge end date and re-start the pledge, or close the old pledge and enter it as a new pledge. The good thing is you can predictably collect thousands of dollars a month with relatively little work. Organizations tend to rely on this money to pay their rent, phone bill, salaries, etc. The tricky thing is that the processing needs to be rock solid. If you screw up and bill the wrong records, you piss off lots of your most valuable donors or you don't collect enough money and you can't pay your bills that month. Having said all that, it's seems to be going well so far. I've got the basic functionality working. I'm learning the intracacies of ebase at the same time. So I think it's going to work. Let me know if anyone wants more details. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob LeLievre LeLievre Information Services List Management Services for Non-Profits voice: 617-474-9131 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -----Original Message----- > From: Dave Shaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 6:57 PM > To: TechRocks Support > Subject: [support] Re: Has anybody added plege processing features to > ebase? > > > >I'm new to ebase and am very impressed so far. I have a client > who wants to > >replace an old, clunky foxpro database that is used to batch > process monthly > >credit card and bank draft pledges. > > Haven't seen anyone come back with experience in this area. You might > have to invent it! What are you thinking about for "batch process". > Search for all monthly pledges due and use FileMaker Replace to post? > Shouldn't be too hard to write a single script to accomplish that. > > > > >I'm tempted to extend ebase to do this. Has anyone tried this? > Any info on > >this feature being in version 2? > > > >Any feedback is greatly appreciated. > > > >----------------------------------------- > >Bob LeLievre > >LeLievre Information Services > >List Management Services for Non-Profits > >21 Wellesley Park > >Boston, MA 02124 > >voice: 617-474-9131 > >email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > >------------------ > >Reminder to each recipient: To change your list account > preferences, go to > >http://email.sparklist.com/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=support and enter > >the email address you used to subscribe to the ebase support list:: > >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > >To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- > > ebase - Relationship Management for Nonprofits, http://www.ebase.org > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -- > Dave Shaw Northwest Classics, Inc > tel: 206-954-7526 fax: 206-625-1338 > > ------------------ > Reminder to each recipient: To change your list account preferences, go to > http://email.sparklist.com/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=support and > enter the email address you used to subscribe to the ebase > support list:: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > ebase - Relationship Management for Nonprofits, http://www.ebase.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > ------------------ Reminder to each recipient: To change your list account preferences, go to http://email.sparklist.com/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=support and enter the email address you used to subscribe to the ebase support list:: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- ebase - Relationship Management for Nonprofits, http://www.ebase.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------
