Hi, has this feature been added? It sounds like the way you propose to resolve the offline payment issue would be just fine.

Currently, there are multiple ways to collect donations in renewal form using extra charge option. Unfortunately, these collections do not show when you run a financial donations report. It would be very useful to be able to include the donations gadget in renewal forms so that that dues and donations collected during renewals can be separately tracked.

I have been strongly considering switching to WA for my org, however, this issue is crucial and I don't know if I can justify going with WA without it. My org relies on donations almost as much as dues for revenue. Other users on this forum have told me that the inability to add a donation to membership renewal has cost them significant revenue. It looks like this basic functionality was asked for 15 years ago and has not been implemented, despite being one of the top user requests. Can we please have an assurance that it will be added soon? Many thanks.

Our jury-rigged solution of adding "donation" fields into the membership database has been working but does not log the information as donations into the system. So we are very! interested in seeing this modification. Our treasurer can live with the offline extra effort - which I believe is happening today when someone sends in a donation check. But we really do need to know our donors. It sounds like the April 17th 2024 proposal will work for us. When???

@Victor, still in backlog unfortunately, but we'll get there early 2025.

Hi @Oleg, any updates on this feature? Processing online donations during these key moments of truth is a great start.

Thanks for your comments, @JPR. As we implement this, donations would be processed and recorded separately from membership/event payment.
And invoice memo for offline payments will be added automatically, no need to worry about this.
As for handling it with donation invoices - we will be definately implementing thesed in future, but no timeline yet, since it's a major overhaul of finance module of WA.

Well, I'd say it's a worthwhile but not complete solution assuming that the online payments solution records the donation as a genuine donation by the contact, not as event or membership income. Otherwise, I don't perceive any improvement. For those who want to pay offline, e.g. by check, I can easily enter the payment manually in two parts: a manual event/membership payment and a donation. I see how to include an "invoice memo" as part of the payment instructions, but don't know how to make it appear only for offline payments. The wording that would appear for both online and offline payments would depend on whether the online payer saw the invoice before or after adding the donation to the transaction.

Here's another reason to make paying for a donation like paying for an event or membership: If a user obtains a credit balance for any reason, he/she can apply it toward a donation.

I don't like it. As you have said, the donation as extra is not automatically registered as a donation by the user and visible as such in the member's profile. I am in the middle of converting 70+ donations made in the context of an otherwise free event to true donations. It is taking me days to do it. I will have to avoid donations as extra cost in the future. Having invoices for donations, whether they are pure donations or donations as extra cost, seems to have advantages, including the ability to represent pledges. What is the argument against having invoices for donations?

I may have started this topic some years ago. I haven't been tracking it in this forum, but it has come back as important to me. I have two organizations that have included donations as extra costs in membership applications and/or event registrations. My problem is, I would like those donations to appear under the contact's list of donations, but they don't. It is possible, but very labor-intensive, for the admin to tweak the WA financial records to separate the donations from the base transactions.
One possible solution is to recognize donations as a special type of extra cost. When the original membership application or event registration is submitted and its invoice generated (whether that invoice is paid immediately or later online or offline). a separate donation invoice would be generated, essentially a pledge, that could also be paid immediately or later online or offline. The paid donations, and possibly the pledges, would be listed under the contact's Donation tab.

@alex absolutely

To confirm @oleg - for online payments for events reg/membership application/renewal the invoice with a donation will have

1) an invoice for the total event/membership component
2) a separate donation generated with the appropriate amount/receipt sent to customer

So there will be an invoice, an invoice payment with tender online payment and a separate donation receipt for the donation amount with the tender online payment set as well.

Is that right?

@Oleg - right you would not want to put a donation line item on an invoice. So if you include a invoice memo to buyer to add $X to their payment you're basically counting that the buyer will do that using their preferred payment method. I see what you mean. The payment received can be split into settling the actual invoice and then applying the remaining payment towards the donation, generating a payment receipt. As long as this is documented I guess it could work.

If there was a way to generate a "draft" donation receipt for these offline membership+donations that would be a bit better. Then the draft receipt can be marked as paid in the donations module once the payment was received.

That proposed solution makes a lot of sense to me! The vast majority of our membership payments are online, and offline payments are handled manually by our Treasurer, and the money (whether it is a donation or membership fee) will ultimately end up in the same bank account.

@Alex Sirota: If we include donation into invoice - it will be taxed and in WA it will be considered as membership or events revenue. That's the main driver for this feature. There are numerous ways to include donations into invoices already - any extra charge field. But all of these workarounds would have exactly the same flaw - revenue will not be considered a donations.

@oleg - still seems overly complex. What does received extra payment for an invoice mean? You mean someone has paid more than the invoice amount and somehow that signals to WA to create a donation? Shouldn't it be part of the invoice total if the donation is marked there? I don't see how this would not be confusing.

@Alex Sirota: there's no need to adjust invoice amount - this way donation would be part of invoice, not a separate donation transaction. What we are suggesting to do is to add donation as separate financial document in WA once association has received any extra payment for an invoice.
All membership/event invoices will remain "clean" this way

The approach for offline payments seems to be odd since the invoice will not include the donation and thus involve manual interventions to adjust the invoice to include the amount of the donation afterwards. If the invoice doesn't have the donation amount someone can't pay for the donation afterwards anyways.

Why not just restrict a donation as part of the membership process only to online payments? That way a proper donation receipt can be registered and the invoice will just have the membership part of the transaction keeping records clean.

The proposed solution would work fine from my perspective. The vast majority (in my experience) of registrants/memberships that pay by invoice are large companies that would rarely if ever include a donation. The donations during a membership renewal or event registration would almost always come from individuals who generally pay by credit card.