The Vanco eGiving (EFT) import utility connects to Vanco through a web service and downloads the electronic offerings given within a specified date range.
This import process protects against duplicate postings by analyzing each downloaded offering to see if it has already been posted to Contributions or is sitting in a pending offering batch waiting to be posted.
The import process also flags offerings that have problems preventing them from being posted to Contributions. Problems can include invalid fund numbers, unassigned Vanco giver IDs, failed or rejected credit cards, and refunds. Shepherd's Staff can take offerings that are assigned to Vanco IDs that are not matched up with a corresponding giver in Shepherd's Staff and assign them to an "Other Giver" record, as well as overriding a fund number from Vanco and associating it with a different fund number in the Contributions module.
The utility creates offering batches for the offerings that were given through Vanco. These batches can then be posted as any other batches could be in the Contributions module, however, they cannot be edited. Also, when you post an offering batch from Vanco, and it generates a deposit in the Finance module, the date on the deposit in finance will reflect the date the money was received in the bank account, while the date shown in the contributions module will be the date the contributor gave the offering. Also, the fees can be automatically deducted from offering batches posted to finance as deposits, with the pre-fees amount showing on givers' records, and the post-fees amounts showing on the deposit.
Important: Before you can use this import, you must set up an EFT (eGiving) account with Vanco. Vanco will provide your client ID, user ID, and password.
- In the Contributions module, go to Giving>Batches
- If you have not already put in your Vanco client ID information, click inside the "Vanco Client IDs" box and then click the pencil button to the left of the box that appears to start entering your Vanco credentials. This will include your Client ID, User ID (This is the Web Services User ID from Vanco, not your Vanco website login, you will need to request this specifically from Vanco) and Password. Click "Add" when finished, or if updating an existing Client ID, click the "Update" button instead. The "Save' checkbox will make sure it retains the selected Client ID for the next time you use the import utility, and the "Show" option will reveal your password, instead of obscuring it behind *'s.
- In the "Offerings from" field, set the date range of contributions you want to download from Vanco. The maximum range is 180 days.
- Make sure to have the "Auto-match envelope numbers box" checked so the utility can cross reference your Vanco ID's you entered on the contributors grid with the ID's being brought down from Vanco.
- Checking the "Un-matched envelopes to 'other givers'" option will make it so any offerings that are associated with an un-matched giver in the "Status" column will be assigned to an "Other Giver" record.
- Clicking the "Vanco fund override" button will allow you to pick one of the funds that imports from Vanco and map it to another fund in your contributions module. A grid will appear that has columns for the Vanco Fund Number, Shepherd's Staff Fund Number and Shepherd's Staff Fund name. If you double click on a row of this grid or click on the row and then click edit, a window will appear, and you can type in the Vanco fund number you want to map over to the fund you selected in that row. You can do this multiple times to have multiple funds from Vanco map to the same fund in Shepherd's Staff. Click the "Close" button at the bottom of the grid to close this grid and continue your import.
- The "Map un-matched funds to" box will let you pick a "catch-all" fund to map all offerings to that don't have a matching fund number in Shepherd's Staff.
- Click “Download”. After loading them in, this will show you all offerings given to Vanco during the time period. If there are any errors that need to be addressed for any of the offerings, they will appear in the status column.
- Click “Create Batch” to create a batch for each date for the offerings that have not yet been posted or put into a batch.
Offerings downloaded from Vanco are broken up into 4 categories. They are:
- Unposted and not in batch - This category means that these offerings are not yet in a batch. Click the "Create Batch" button to put these offerings into offering batches that you can then post.
- In a batch waiting to be posted - This category means that these offerings have been downloaded and put into an offering batch, but haven't been posted yet.
- Cannot be posted - This category means that these offerings have an issue that is preventing them from being posted, such as an Vanco giver ID number that doesn't match any ID in Shepherd's Staff or an invalid fund number. The status column will reveal what the issue is with each offering so you can work on troubleshooting that issue.
- Posted - This category contains offerings that have already been downloaded and posted within the date range you chose.
You can see the name of the giver in Vanco for an offering by clicking on that record in the grid and clicking the "View" button. Clicking the "Save" button will let you export "CSV" file of your offerings, and clicking "Copy ID" will copy the Vanco ID of the offering you have selected to your Windows clipboard so you can paste it in to a contributor's record. You can export all the offerings in the view that you have selected out to excel by clicking the "Export" option.