Year-end Donation Letters

jefekefe · ‎December 28, 2017

QuickBooks Online sells itself as being the answer for Nonprofits, but doesn't allow NP's to create End-of-Year Donation Letters/Statements for Donors (Customers), which is one of the most important ways to cultivate and appreciate donors - and is required by the IRS.

Does anyone know of how to create end-of-year statements for donors? I've scoured the web and the QBO Community but to no avail.

Thank you anyone for the needed help.

Jeff

MorganB · ‎December 28, 2017

Thanks for trying that for me.

I may have found another option for you to create donation statements. If you don't mind, let's give these steps a shot:

1. Click Reports
2. Choose Sales by Customer Detail
(You could also click Reports > Custom Reports > Transaction Detail to make a custom report.)
3. Click Customize.
(If you're creating a custom report, click the Filters tab and set the Account filter to choose multiple accounts or filter reports by any available criteria.)
4. Choose the columns (Customers) to be displayed.
5. Click Run report.

If this doesn't work, I'd recommend leaving feedback for our product development team.

View solution in original post

Anonymous · ‎September 14, 2018

Hi Jeff,

You can run a sales by customer summary report, and print it out, and before you use that total, go to the first dono on your list and click on that donors account and male sure the total you see on the report it's the same, the reason I am suggesting that, it's because I have found myself with people that have recorded a sales receipt or made a deposit of a psyment, but for some reason the sales by customer summary report has given me only amounts that are in invoices not including some sales receipts, this may be different for you, as far as the letters, you are to have of course a thank you for the donation, but you must include the total amount donated for the calendar year, ours says Dear Mr. John Do! we thank you for your support of $320.00 to name of charity our 501(c)(3) non-profit or not-for-profit 501(c)7organization, we thank you for your total donation in 2017, your support had contribute to our mission to help prevent homelessness.

You can find many templates of year end letters on Google, But the elements are the most important and you have to include your letter head with address and phone number, signed by the executive director, and must be mailed before January 30 of the current year for the amount of the previous year. And getting back to QBO, I would add class to monthly donors, one time donors, business fundraising, this makes it easier to sort out, you can export your report to excel so that you can add to the donors account any other money that needs to be added, with one template of your letter you can make all, just change the name of the donor, I agree with you about the letters it should be a feature included, but you can also rename a statement to or customize it to reflect as year end letters, but I would suggest just running the report and adding/changing the name of donor and amount, for each donor, I was not using the QBO Non-profit, I was using QBO Plus, I will give the Non-Profit a try, since you can change the label to donors I didn't have an issue using the QBO Plus, intead of the non-profit. I hope this helps a bit.

View solution in original post

MorganB · ‎December 28, 2017

Hey there jefekefe,

Welcome to the Community. I'm glad to help point you in the right direction.

I found an article that might help get you back on track. You can check it out here: https://community.intuit.com/questions/1507980-year-end-donor-statements-missing-donations.

If you find during your research that the solution in this article doesn't work for you, I'd suggest sending feedback to our product development team. This would allow you to provide specific information about the feature you'd like to see added. Your comments and suggestions can be submitted by clicking the gear icon then selecting Feedback.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

jefekefe · ‎December 28, 2017

Thanks for the quick response. Unfortunately, this solution doesn't work since Customers are not showing up in that scenario.

vpcontroller · ‎December 28, 2017

Definitely, one less most wanted feature in QBO than QB desktop.

MorganB · ‎December 28, 2017

Thanks for trying that for me.

I may have found another option for you to create donation statements. If you don't mind, let's give these steps a shot:

1. Click Reports
2. Choose Sales by Customer Detail
(You could also click Reports > Custom Reports > Transaction Detail to make a custom report.)
3. Click Customize.
(If you're creating a custom report, click the Filters tab and set the Account filter to choose multiple accounts or filter reports by any available criteria.)
4. Choose the columns (Customers) to be displayed.
5. Click Run report.

If this doesn't work, I'd recommend leaving feedback for our product development team.

jefekefe · ‎December 28, 2017

Yep. That just runs a report. I've "left feedback" a few times but to no avail. The non-online version allowed this but apparently it wasn't important enough to keep on the program.

Anonymous · ‎December 28, 2017

Hey Jeff (@jefekefe),

Welcome to the QuickBooks Community. There are a number of integrated donation apps that sync with your financial data. Have you checked the app store?

@Clarise, you have a plethora of non-profit knowledge! Do you have any insight into this issue and possible workarounds? Thanks in advance!

jefekefe · ‎December 28, 2017

Thanks James (@JamesOng),

Super helpful. I'll look into the apps and appreciate you informing me of that solution.

Jeff

vpcontroller · ‎December 29, 2017

@jefekefe @Anonymous

Check out these apps in QBO, the Method: Donor has been around for a while. But some of these apps are pricey, you will pay as much as you're paying for QuickBooks or more. You can check out for a 30-day trial.

+

jefekefe · ‎December 29, 2017

It is a letdown that the bait and switch is now making it so we have to pay more now for something that worked fine and free on the desktop version.

Clarise · ‎January 01, 2018

Hey there!

Lots of nonprofits use QuickBooks Online for accounting, but accounting is not fundraising. There are work arounds to make it do the job, but they are work arounds. When I made the switch from desktop to online, the Intuit team was really clear with me. They stressed that the online product was built from the ground up as a new package. It doesn't have exactly the same features as desktop. So, if a company is using important features in the desktop product that aren't online, that company should wait. Personally, I won't go back to nonprofit for desktops. I love the increased data security, unlimited users, Treasurer accessibility and access to apps like Bill.com and Plooto.

What I do about donor letters is use a fundraising package, like Sumac. It has a free version for smaller nonprofits:  https://sumac.com/purchase/

But if you really want to keep everything in QuickBooks, Gregg Bossen did a session on it at QB Connect this year. You can find his slides in this very community!  https://qbcommunity.com/t5/QuickBooks-Connect/A-deep-dive-into-Contributions-Grant-Tracking-amp-Dono...

Gregg is a CPA who does a lot of work with nonprofits. You can find him here:  http://greggbossen.com/

Happy New Year! If you have any other nonprofit questions, feel free to message me directly.

AlphieR · ‎May 06, 2018

I don't want to be rude or confrontational, but I have to point out here that this is an absurd suggestion.

The "sales by customer detail" report doesn't allow you to add any address columns; how on earth is anyone supposed do a mail merge with it?

Might as well go over the rest of them now:

"Transaction list by customer" is a little bit closer - you can add addresses to the report - but you can't add any colums for what the transaction was for - you would be generating letters for all sorts of irrelevant people.

"Sales by product/service" won't allow address columns, nor will "sales by class detail," and now you are out of options.

The "donor contact list" isn't useful; you can't filter for anything except, bizarrely, an individual donor, their payment terms, and when they were created/modified or deleted.

It's stunning that no one thought a company would want to be able to generate a list of everyone who bought a certain product. I'm coming at this from the non-profit angle myself, but this is basic functionality any business would want.

Anonymous · ‎May 07, 2018

@AlphieR,

Welcome to the community. Thanks for your input, not rude or confrontational at all, glad you're giving your perspective.

Since you're from the industry, what tools do you currently use to handle large volumes of donor info?

My latest effort – “How to Customize Reports in QuickBooks Online”

Anonymous · ‎September 14, 2018

Hi Jeff,

You can run a sales by customer summary report, and print it out, and before you use that total, go to the first dono on your list and click on that donors account and male sure the total you see on the report it's the same, the reason I am suggesting that, it's because I have found myself with people that have recorded a sales receipt or made a deposit of a psyment, but for some reason the sales by customer summary report has given me only amounts that are in invoices not including some sales receipts, this may be different for you, as far as the letters, you are to have of course a thank you for the donation, but you must include the total amount donated for the calendar year, ours says Dear Mr. John Do! we thank you for your support of $320.00 to name of charity our 501(c)(3) non-profit or not-for-profit 501(c)7organization, we thank you for your total donation in 2017, your support had contribute to our mission to help prevent homelessness.

You can find many templates of year end letters on Google, But the elements are the most important and you have to include your letter head with address and phone number, signed by the executive director, and must be mailed before January 30 of the current year for the amount of the previous year. And getting back to QBO, I would add class to monthly donors, one time donors, business fundraising, this makes it easier to sort out, you can export your report to excel so that you can add to the donors account any other money that needs to be added, with one template of your letter you can make all, just change the name of the donor, I agree with you about the letters it should be a feature included, but you can also rename a statement to or customize it to reflect as year end letters, but I would suggest just running the report and adding/changing the name of donor and amount, for each donor, I was not using the QBO Non-profit, I was using QBO Plus, I will give the Non-Profit a try, since you can change the label to donors I didn't have an issue using the QBO Plus, intead of the non-profit. I hope this helps a bit.

AlphieR · ‎October 01, 2018

I've gotten an email today stating that this has been accepted as a solution.

This isn't a solution, as it doesn't report the necessary information to the user. Intuit needs to understand that.

@MorganB wrote:
Thanks for trying that for me.

I may have found another option for you to create donation statements. If you don't mind, let's give these steps a shot:

1. Click Reports
2. Choose Sales by Customer Detail
(You could also click Reports > Custom Reports > Transaction Detail to make a custom report.)
3. Click Customize.
(If you're creating a custom report, click the Filters tab and set the Account filter to choose multiple accounts or filter reports by any available criteria.)
4. Choose the columns (Customers) to be displayed.
5. Click Run report.

If this doesn't work, I'd recommend leaving feedback for our product development team.

Asparagirl · ‎October 29, 2018

Intuit, it is amazing that you STILL have not solved this issue. But you managed to cherry-pick a "solution" and promote it as a "solution" when it actually doesn't work at all, and you even have several detailed replies telling you so. Ugh.

KW-tyndalebt · ‎December 07, 2018

Has anyone used this method to create year end donor letters from Quickbooks Desktop?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwfWdtZcA20

KW-tyndalebt · ‎December 07, 2018

Hello, has anyone tried the method as shown on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwfWdtZcA20 for Quickbooks Desktop?

CraigH · ‎December 17, 2018

I've been waiting for this feature for 4 years now, still not any closer. I basically do what they're suggesting, the Sales by Prod/Service report, filtered the way I've entered them. However, this still requires manual manipulation in a spreadsheet just to get things in a manner I can either mail merge, or any other useful format. Including, having to cross-reference customer addresses from a separate export.

As you've already pointed out, the several reports are very close, but simply lacking one key filter, or column to bring it all together. But, even with a good report, it's still a secondary mail merge.

The closest, best option I've seen, but still won't work, is the "Statements" generator from the + menu. It is ready made, merged, reported, formatted, printable/exportable, letter headed at all. WITH ONE MAJOR FLAW. You simply can't filter.

For our non-profit, we 'sell' some product for a donation. But, of course, that income isn't tax deductible for the donors as they've received an approximate value in return for the donation. So, for any donor, who has 'purchased' a product AND donated a given a monthly donation, I am unable to filter to only display the deductible donations.

I'll send yet another dev request for this, but the simple answer is for them to add the product/service filter to the Statement Generator.

Anonymous · ‎December 27, 2018

I've been reading all of the comments, I want to get a better understanding of what I have read. So there is not standard report in Quickbooks Non Profit to print out year end donation letters/statements? If this is the case, this product is sucks, one of the reason we went with this product because the sales person stated that you can print out year end statements. I ran the customized sales by customer detail, but it's not given me all of the information that I need. Can some please help. The year end statements are due out next month. If this is the case I may have to purchase a new product.

VivienJ · ‎December 27, 2018

Hello @Anonymous,

Thanks for joining us and sharing some detailed information regarding your concern. I've noticed a new thread you've created with the same question.

My colleague @Charies_M was able to grab it and provided a helpful response specifically to the version of QuickBooks (Desktop) you're using. Let me route you to that link:

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/community/Other-questions/How-do-you-generate-year-end-donation-letters-by-customer/m-p/213000#M5643

I want to ensure you're able to print out year end donation statements/letters to your customers, so please feel free to let me know how it goes.

CraigH · ‎December 27, 2018

So the solution that your colleague is offering is to use a 3rd party plug in? And, that’s only for the Desktop version? Seems like a deflection to me.

I’ve put an enhancement request in for this, all that is needed is a filter on the Statement Generator. Simple, quick solution with with lots of positive customer experience.

Having worked in in software development, I don’t see any reason this low hanging fruit of an issue hasn’t been solved.

CraigH · ‎December 27, 2018

So the solution that your colleague is offering is to use a 3rd party plug in? And, that’s only for the Desktop version? Seems like a deflection to me.

I’ve put an enhancement request in for this, all that is needed is a filter on the Statement Generator. Simple, quick solution with with lots of positive customer experience.

Having worked in in software development, I don’t see any reason this low hanging fruit of an issue hasn’t been solved.

fmlcben · ‎January 31, 2019

How is this marked solved? We are required to issue a contribution report to each donor. One list with all of the donors on it doesn't help. I have to go through and create these manually for the third year in a row. It's really inexplicable that it is not solved. I have recommended my nonprofit go to other software.

IamjuViel · ‎January 31, 2019

Hello there, @fmlcben.

I really appreciate you for voicing your feedback. When a post is marked as solved, it means one QuickBooks Community member or user follows the answer provided which works for him or her and mark it as an Acceptable Solution.

On the other hand, I can see how beneficial this specific feature would be to you and your business. I'll make sure to pass along your request to the Product Development Team to let them know you'd like the system to have the ability to automatically generate Year-End Donation letters.

If you have any suggestions, feedback and product requests for improvement, you can directly send it to us. Here's how:

Go to Gear icon.
Choose Feedback.
Type in comments or suggestions.
Select Next.
Click Skip.
Hit Send Message.

I appreciate your patience, feel free to contact me here if you have follow-up questions about managing your donor transactions. In the meantime, stay tuned to our Community page for new product updates and releases!

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