1. If your organization does not use donations at all, you can completely turn off the donation management features of Sumac by clicking this check box.

2. This check box enables donation batches. Batches group donations together, and automatically calculate the total of the donations in the batch. This is particularly helpful for managing periodic bank deposits. Batch reports can be included with a bank deposit to produce a paper record of cheques received and deposited.

3. Donation Types are the only mandatory classification field in donation records, so you should normally always enter them. However, in some unusual circumstances, where your usage of Sumac means that other fields provide all required classification information, you can make donation types optional.

4. If necessary, you can specify that the Donor Recognition field should always be set. If you put a check mark here, Sumac will automatically fill in the Donor Recognition field with the Donor's name. However, this is usually not necessary

6. Sumac can auto-fill the Received Date from the last-saved donation record. If your organization enters a high volume of donations each day, putting a check mark here can help you save time while entering donations, as Sumac can fill in the Received Date for you based on the last donation you entered.

7. If your organization does not generate tax receipts for donations under a certain amount, enter the amount here. For example, perhaps you only create receipts for donations over $5, so enter $5.

9. You can also tell Sumac to create a payment record for each donation, which makes reporting total transactions easier. When this check box is turned on, whenever you enter a donation, you are automatically prompted to complete a payment record. Alternatively, you can specify that Sumac should only do this for donations made via credit cards. If you are using Sumac for payment processing, a payment record can be used to automatically clear a credit card transaction, and remembers additional details like credit card number and authorization code.

10. You can also decide to make “zero” donations acceptable in your Sumac installation. This allows you to track in-kind donations that have no transferable monetary value. 

11. This checkbox lets you decide that account codes are required and mandatory in donation records. Account Codes are usually optional in donation records. However, you may want to make them mandatory to ensure that all donations show up in Sumac’s accounting reports. 

12. This check box makes Funds mandatory in Donation records.

13. You can tell Sumac that if a donation has been marked as reconciled, it should lock financially-significant information to prevent it from being changed.

14. When entering a donation, Sumac can automatically enter a Recognition contact based on the In Honor contact. For example, often all donations in honor of a particular contact are supposed to have a recognition letter sent to a particular family member of the in-honor contact. In this situation, create a “receives recognition” relationship and relate the in-honor contact to the recognition contact with this relationship. Use this preference to tell Sumac the relationship to be used for this purpose. Then, whenever a donation is in honor of someone, Sumac can set the Recognition contact based on the relationship.

15. This drop-down menu works similarly to the recognition for in-honor contacts, but it tells Sumac how to automatically find a soft-credit contact based on the donor. If a particular contact, perhaps a board member, is supposed to receive a soft credit for donations from a particular donor, then relate the board member and donor with a “receives soft credit for” relationship.

16. If your organization accepts matching gifts, this drop-down menu works similarly to the recognition for in-honor and Soft Credit contacts, but it tells Sumac how to automatically find a Matching Donor contact based on the donor. 

Click the Receipting tab.

1. You can specify the next receipt number to be assigned.

2. If your organization uses contact segments, and receipts should be numbered based on the contact segment of the donor, put a check mark here. Otherwise, leave this blank.

To automatically receipt online donations, choose the donation receipt template. Leave blank if online donations should not be receipted automatically.