While most donor information can be controlled by the donors themselves, Administrators can update donor profile information and merge, join, or make donors inactive as needed.
In Giving, donor profiles are created in two ways:
In either case, if the person already exists in your Planning Center People database, Giving will use their name and email address to match the donor with that existing profile.
Tip
To avoid duplicates for donors with nicknames, enter the person's nickname as the First Name. For example, if you have a donor named Robert with the nickname Bob, enter Robert as the Given Name and Bob as the First Name.
From a donor's profile, you can:
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View and update donor information and manually add a donation.
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Add a pledge for a campaign.
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Get information on the donor's recurring donations and donation history.
Important
Donors can also change many of these things for themselves from their donor profile in Church Center.
Duplicate donor profiles can sometimes be created when people give online for the first time, use a different email address than usual when donating, or misspell their name or email address. Merging the two profiles will bring the donor's information into a single, combined profile.
Important
You need at least manager level permissions in Planning Center People to merge people's profiles.
If a profile has a potential duplicate, the Actions dropdown menu on the profile shows a warning label. To merge duplicate profiles, select Review in People from the Actions dropdown.
When you merge two known duplicates in Planning Center People, all past information for that person is combined. This has important implications for every product in Planning Center.
In Giving, the following information gets combined:
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Donation history
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Recurring donations
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Phone numbers using Text2Give
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Contact information (which could impact where their donation receipts are sent)
Payment methods are only kept for the 'winning' profile in the merge. This means payment methods from the profile that is merged into the profile that is kept will be removed.
Donors can re-add payment methods to their profiles on Church Center. If the payment method was used for a recurring donation, the donor must update their recurring donation with a new payment method for it to continue processing as usual.
If a donor has moved, died, or left your church, you can't erase their previous donations. However, you can make the donor inactive in Planning Center People.
To make a donor inactive:
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Go to the person's profile in Giving.
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Select the Actions dropdown followed by Delete profile.
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Mark the donor as Inactive in People.
After a donor is made inactive:
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Inactive donors are issued donor statements for any year they have given donations.
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If an inactive person makes a donation or has a recurring donation go through, they are made active again in Planning Center People.
Important
Inactive profiles are treated differently in every product.
For example, when you create lists in Planning Center People, inactive profiles are excluded by default. If they were a member of any groups in Planning Center Groups, marking someone as inactive removes them from any active groups.
Danger
Wait! It's likely that what you really want to do is mark a donor as inactive. Please read Remove Donors above.
It might make sense to permanently delete a donor profile if you created a test profile and no longer need it. In this case, it's best to refund any test transactions and then delete the profile in People.
If any donations from that donor remain in your Giving database after their profile is deleted, they'll be marked with (Deleted).