Adding recurring payments

Regular donors in vega refers to any contact that has a recurring payment.

These recurring payments automatically process the payment as per the details set out and do not issue a receipt number for each payment. It is best practice to provide an annual receipt for regular donors at the end of the financial year, this is done using the annual receipt generator.

Recurring payments can be created from your donation widget, if you have the setting on to show donation frequency options. These will automatically create the recurring payment on the contact.

There is also the option to import recurring payments but in this article, we will detail how to add a recurring payment directly on a contact.

 

Please note- In your admin recurring payment settings you are able to configure if a recurring payment will auto-generate payments for those not being processed by your payment gateway. If you have this option turned on and are not using a credit card to process the payments, the recurrence will generate successful payments as per the settings. If this is turned off then only payments being processed by a credit card will be created.

 

Adding a recurring payment

Find the contact you are adding a recurring payment to and click 'Add Recurring Payment' from the top button options:

 

This will open the recurring payment form:

You will notice the recurring payment form is divided into sections, as described below.

 

Contact Details

On the left-hand side, you will see important Contact Details:

• Vega ID, Account Name, Email
• Home phone, work phone, mobile
• Address
• Membership
• Contact Branch, receipt option
• Key Attributes (if you have this turned on in your financial settings)
• Alert (if you have this turned on in your financial settings)

 

Payment Attributes

On the left-hand side at the bottom will be any Payment Attributes. You will automatically have the Contact Branch added here and drop-down lists to add any other applicable payment attributes and assign a value to these.

 

The middle section of this form is where the payment information is added.

Payment Type

There are six payment types available:

• Standard: This is the default option for recurring payments. No further information is required.
• Membership: This option is available if memberships have been set up in vega. It allows for membership payments to be processed by selecting the membership type.
• Pledge: Pledge payments are for recording promised or pledged amounts to be paid at a later date. The pay type is automatically updated to ‘Pledge’ and is not recorded against payments receipted.
• Pledge Fulfilment: This is used to record a payment against a pledge.
• Invoice: Like Pledges, invoices are not recorded as payments until the invoice has been paid.
• In-Memorium: This allows for payments to be recorded in memory of another individual within Vega. Details of in memoriam payments can be included in documents through the use of merge tags.
• Supporter-led Fundraising: This option will allow a payment to be recorded as fundraised by another contact in Vega and will also show on their payments.

 

Recurring Payment Details

• Pay Type- Cheque, Credit Card etc. Each of these different types will require different details to be completed as per the method of payment.
  • If you have a payment gateway setup in vega, you can choose credit card to create a recurrence that will automatically link to your gateway but be managed in vega and process a payment on the card at each frequency.
  • If you choose another pay type, the recurring payment will only generate a payment at each frequency if your financial settings are set to automatically process.
• Total Amount- Add the total payment amount to be taken each time.

 

Distributions

This is where you can split your recurring payment into different distributions to allocate funds to different campaigns and/or GL codes. This can be used to split a payment between different projects, fundraising for different items, etc.

If your recurring payment is to be allocated with the same financial details for the full amount then you can simply select the relevant Campaign and GL Code.

 

On the right-hand side, we need to set your recurrence schedule information.

Recurrence Dates

There are three options available here:

1. The recurrence can be set to continue indefinitely, or until suspended or manually changed by a user.

2. The recurrence can be set to end on a particular date.

3. The recurrence can be set to end after reaching a total amount given.

Please see the detail below for how to complete this section based on the options above.

 

1. The recurrence can be set to continue indefinitely, or until suspended or manually changed by a user:

• Start Date- This is the date the recurrence was created or the contact joined up as a regular giver.
• Skip Until- This can be used to delay when the first payment should be taken if required.
• Until Further Notice- This is ticked to continue processing the recurring payment indefinitely, or until suspended.
• End- This is left blank and not editable.
• Total Amount Reached- This is left blank and not editable.
• Amount Left- This is left blank and not editable.
• Due- This will default to the current date and is used to set when the first payment is due to be taken. If this is backdated then the recurrence will process payments until it has reached the current date. The Time will default as 2:00:00 AM but this can be edited to set a specific time the recurrence should be processed.
• Next Take Date- This will default to the current date and is used to set when the first payment will be taken. The Time will default as 2:00:00 AM but this can be edited to set a specific time the recurrence should be processed. This should be set as the same date as the due date.

2. The recurrence can be set to end on a particular date:

• Start Date- This is the date the recurrence was created or the contact joined up as a regular giver.
• Skip Until- This can be used to delay when the first payment should be taken if required.
• Until Further Notice- This is unticked.
• End- This will default to the current date and should be set for when the recurring payment should be cancelled and it will not process past this date.
• Total Amount Reached- This is left blank.
• Amount Left- This is left blank and not editable.
• Due- This will default to the current date and is used to set when the first payment is due to be taken. If this is backdated then the recurrence will process payments until it has reached the current date. The Time will default as 2:00:00 AM but this can be edited to set a specific time the recurrence should be processed.
• Next Take Date- This will default to the current date and is used to set when the first payment will be taken. The Time will default as 2:00:00 AM but this can be edited to set a specific time the recurrence should be processed. This should be set as the same date as the due date.

3. The recurrence can be set to end after reaching a total amount given:

• Start Date- This is the date the recurrence was created or the contact joined up as a regular giver.
• Skip Until- This can be used to delay when the first payment should be taken if required.
• Until Further Notice- This is unticked.
• End- This can be set as blank.
• Total Amount Reached- Enter the end amount when this recurrence will be stopped.
• Amount Left- This is left blank and not editable.
• Due- This will default to the current date and is used to set when the first payment is due to be taken. If this is backdated then the recurrence will process payments until it has reached the current date. The Time will default as 2:00:00 AM but this can be edited to set a specific time the recurrence should be processed.
• Next Take Date- This will default to the current date and is used to set when the first payment will be taken. The Time will default as 2:00:00 AM but this can be edited to set a specific time the recurrence should be processed. This should be set as the same date as the due date.

 

Recurrence Details

• Particulars- Additional information on the payment.
• Code- Additional information on the payment.
• Reference- Additional information on the payment.
• Frequency- Select the frequency that payment should be taken at. These are editable as attributes in the attribute type Frequency or Donation Frequency. Available frequencies are:
  • Weekly
  • Four Weekly
  • Fortnightly
  • Monthly
  • Quarterly
  • Three Monthly
  • Two Monthly (every two months)
  • Six Monthly
  • Annual
  • Annually
  • Twelve Monthly
  • Bi-Monthly (every two months)
  Please note- Any frequency attribute added that does not match one above will default to monthly, capitalisation does not matter.
• Recruited By- This can be used to show the staff member/ volunteer/ telemarketer who recruited this recurring payment. Options can be added as attributes in the system attribute type Recruited By.
• Status- When first adding a recurring payment the status will default to Payment Open, this means the recurrence will be processed as per the details entered.
• Status Reason- This can be used to show the reason or a specific detail of how this payment was recruited. Options can be added as attributes in the system attribute type Recurring Status Reason.

Now click Save to see this recurrence on your contact on the Payments & Recurring tab:

Above shows how your recurring payment will be displayed for each recurring date option detailed above.

You can open the recurring payments by clicking on each row, details on the payment form can then be edited if needed.

There are two additional fields on the bottom right of the form once the recurrence has been saved:

• PlanID/Token- If your recurring payment is being paid by a credit card and processed by your payment gateway then this field will show the tokenID generated by your gateway. This is how vega is able to charge the credit card without storing any of the details.
• No. failed payments- This is the number of payment retries when a payment declines before the recurrence is updated to suspended status. The number of times a payment is retried is configured in your admin recurring payment settings.

Your recurrence will now process the payments as per your frequency and details created above.

The payments can be easily identified as they will have a frequency other than Single Payment and will not be issued a receipt number.