Importing gifts

Giving history is what makes Karani’s reports meaningful. Import it early.

Import contacts first

Gifts attach to contacts by organisation ID. Import contacts before gifts, or the gifts have nowhere to land.

Preparing the file

Columns you want: Donor ID, name, amount, gift date, and optionally giving method.

Required: gift date and gift amount. Everything else is optional, though a gift with no donor identifier isn’t much use.

Dates as YYYY-MM-DD, amounts as plain numbers with no currency symbol or thousands separator.

Running the import

1. Import → Gifts.

   karani.co/imports/gifts

   

2. Choose your file and Submit.

3. Map the columns.

4. Process CSV.

Mapping

Karani field	Notes
Gift Amount	Required.
Gift Date	Required. YYYY-MM-DD. The date the donor gave, not the date you’re importing.
Contact Organization ID	How the gift finds its donor. Map this.
Contact Full Name	Fallback matching by name. Available in “first last” and “last, first” forms.
Contact First Name / Contact Last Name	Alternative name matching.
Gift Organization ID	Your organisation’s ID for the gift, if it has one. Prevents double-importing the same gift.
Gift Type	Cash, Check, Credit Card, EFT, and so on. See Gift types.

Map Gift Organization ID if you have it

It’s the gift’s own unique ID from your organisation’s system. With it, re-importing an overlapping date range updates the existing gifts instead of creating duplicates — which matters a lot if you import monthly.

Matching donors

Karani matches a gift to a contact in this order:

1. Contact Organization ID — reliable.
2. Name — best effort, and wrong more often than you’d think. Two people with the same name, a married surname change, a typo.

If a gift can’t be matched, it won’t attach to the right contact, and that donor’s behind-on-giving figures will be wrong.

After the import

1. Check the Gifts Report — filter to the date range you imported and compare the total against your source. They should match exactly.
2. Open a few contact profiles and check the gifts landed on the right people.
3. Check the Finances page — the year-to-date figure should now look right.

Percentages look absurd after importing?

Almost always your pledge goal is still at the $10,000 default, not a problem with the import.

Importing monthly

The common ongoing pattern:

1. Export the month’s giving from your organisation’s system.
2. Import it into Karani, mapping Gift Organization ID so re-imports don’t duplicate.
3. Check the total in the Gifts Report.

Ten minutes a month, and every report stays current.