Importing pledges

Import contacts first

Pledges attach to contacts by organisation ID.

Required columns

The pledge importer requires four fields:

• Amount
• Frequency
• Contact Organization ID
• Start Date

Plus, optionally, End Date and the one-time flag.

Frequency values

The importer expects: Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual.

Normalise your source data to those words before importing. “12x/year”, “mo”, and “Monthly” won’t all be understood.

Start dates

Format as YYYY-MM-DD.

This is the field that quietly ruins your totals

Karani counts a pledge toward a fiscal year from its start date forward. If your export doesn’t have real start dates and you import today’s date for everything, your pledged total will read far too low and nobody will look behind on giving.

If you don’t have real start dates, set them to the first day of your current fiscal year in the spreadsheet before importing. That makes this year’s figures correct, which is what you need.

See Adding a pledge.

Running the import

1. Import → Pledges.

   karani.co/imports/pledges

   

2. Choose your file and Submit.

3. Map the columns — Amount, Frequency, Start Date, End Date, one-time flag, and Contact Organization ID.

4. Process CSV.

One-time pledges

Map a column to Is “One-Time”? (Y/N) if your data distinguishes them. One-time pledges are counted toward the year’s totals but don’t generate ongoing expectations. See Adding a pledge.

After the import

1. Open the Finances page. Percent funded should now reflect your real pledged total.
2. Open a few contact profiles and check the pledge amounts and frequencies.
3. Run Donors Behind on Giving. If nearly everyone is behind, your start dates are wrong. If nobody is, they may be wrong the other way.

Import pledges before gifts

Then the first time you look at behind-on-giving, both halves of the comparison are present and you can tell straight away whether the import worked.