Managing Standing Orders

Use iMIS Standing Orders to manage the following tasks:

■    Recording a contact's commitment to donate to your organization by Standing Order.

■    Generating a record of the payments your organization expects to receive every month.

■    Importing the Standing Order payment file you receive periodically from your organization's bank.

■    Matching the payments you received from the bank to the payments you expected to receive.

■    Resolving any mismatched payments.

Note: The steps below are based on the default Standing Order configuration shipped with iMIS. If your organization has tailored this feature, your view of the product may not match the documentation.

To record Standing Order commitments, Staff

1.  On your staff site, select Contacts > Find contact.

2.  Search for and select the iMIS contact who has made the commitment.

3.  Navigate to the Standing Order commitments page.

By default, it is located on your staff site from Contacts > Contact management > Recurring donation commitments.

4.  Create a new commitment or edit an existing commitment.

Note: A donor can notify you of their intent to make donations by Standing Order if your organization has implemented the Recurring Donation Commitments Public View (UK) iPart.

To generate expected payments

1.  Navigate to the Expected payments page.

By default, it is located on your staff site under Donations > Recurring donations.

2.  Select a Month/Year and click Generate Expected Payments.

To import the Standing Order payment file

1.  Navigate to the Import Standing Order payment file page.

By default, it is located on your staff site under Donations > Recurring donations.

2.  Select a File Format.

The file format identifies the structure of the data within the file, so that iMIS can properly import and process the contents. Currently the Standing Order payments file - BACS format is the only supported format (see Supported Standing Order payment file format).

3.  Select a file, and then click Upload.

When you upload a file, it is prepared for processing as a common standing order payment file.

To match imported payments to expected payments

Note: The maximum import file size that can be processed depends on many factors, such as memory, processor speed, and load on the server. If you have any problems processing a large file, then we recommend that you break it up into smaller pieces of no more than 1000 transactions per file.

1.  From the Files awaiting processing section of the Import Standing Order payment file page, find the file you imported in the list. The file name has been updated with a timestamp.

2.  Click Process.

When you click Process, iMIS compares the information in the imported bank file to the expected payments you have on record. For iMIS to successfully create a donation payment for the correct contact, each of the following items must match up:

■    Branch Sort Code

■    Bank Account Number

■    Match Reference Number

■    Donation Amount

Note: An expected payment record must be generated for the month and year of the bank payment.

After iMIS does the comparison, one of two scenarios may occur:

■    If all items in the bank payment file are matched to expected payments, then:

□    A Success - [import file name].log is created in the Log Viewer. The log lists each payment that has been successfully matched. An iMIS gift is created for each successful match.

□    The original import file is removed from the Files awaiting processing list.

■    If one or more items in the bank payment file could not be matched to expected payments, then:

□    A Warnings - [import file name].log is created in the Log Viewer. The log lists each payment that could not be matched and any payments that have been successfully matched. If a Warnings log has been created, you must review the errors and take steps to resolve the payment mismatches. An iMIS gift is created for any successful matches.

□    The original import file is removed from the Files awaiting processing list.

□    An [import file name] - error - [timestamp].xml file is created in the Files awaiting processing list. This file contains all of the items from the original bank payment file that could not be matched. After resolving the payment mismatches, reprocess this file to complete the import.

To resolve payment mismatches

1.  From the Log Viewer section of the Import Standing Order payment file page, find the Warnings log for the file you are trying to process: Warnings - [import file name].log.

2.  Click the arrow on the left to expand the log.

The log lists each payment that could not be matched and any payments that have been successfully matched.

3.  Review the error entries in the list.

The error log entry describes the problem iMIS encountered, the steps you should take to resolve the problem, and the associated payment data from the bank.

4.  Resolve the payment mismatches using the information in the error messages.

5.  From the Files awaiting processing section of the Import Standing Order payment file page, process the [import file name] - error - [timestamp].xml file that contains the payments that failed to match.

If all of the problems have been resolved, a Success - [import file name].log is created in the Log Viewer. However, if there is still a problem matching payments, a new Warnings - [import file name].log is created in the Log Viewer.

6.  Repeat the steps above until all payments have been matched.