Release Notes - Sumac 4.7.5 - November 8, 2023

Release Notes - Sumac 4.7.5 - November 8, 2023

What’s new

Improved management of In Honor and In Memory donations

In this release, we've made it easier to track and send notifications to the recipients of, or those who have given in Honor or in Memory of donations. You’ll find all of these improvements under the new Tributes heading in donation records.


This feature offers several benefits, including:

  • Gratitude And Recognition: Notifications that express thanks and recognize donors help you foster stronger relationships.
  • Transparency And Trust: Updates show how donations are used, building trust and accountability with the donors, in-honour contacts and the loved ones for memorialized gifts .
  • Sustained Engagement: Regular communication keeps donors engaged and encourages ongoing support.
  • Repeat Donations And Higher Retention: Seeing impact often leads to more giving or increased support boosting donor loyalty.
  • Compliance And Reporting: Essential for regulatory requirements and financial records.

To better accomplish these goals and benefits, we’ve made the following improvements to Sumac Donations!

New And Updated Fields For Tribute Donations

We’ve updated our donation records to make it easier to indicate if a donation is In Honour of, or In Memory of someone.


We've also introduced new data fields to capture information about individuals who should receive notifications regarding tribute donations.


Easily Copy Your Data To The New Fields

Many of our customers may already have tribute-related data in their donation records (e.g. using the In-Honor Contact and Notes fields). To make it easier for customers to take advantage of the new and improved tribute fields, we've copied that information to the new fields based on our best estimates.

For organizations who have been using more unique methods to track tribute-related information, we have introduced  a new option in Sumac Imports allowing you to update your donation records to take advantage of these new tribute fields.


If you have questions or require further assistance, please contact our support team at 877.399.4645 x 1 or email us at support@sumac.com

In Honour And Send Recognition No Longer Need To Be Contact Records

We are helping you save on your monthly fees by no longer requiring the names entered In Honour of and Send Recognition to be contacts in your database! Simply type the In Honor or Send Recognition individual’s name into the appropriate field to capture who they are without adding them as a contact in Sumac.

If you want to continue to using the benefits of adding the Honoree and the Person to notify fields as contacts in Sumac (e.g. easily tracking and reporting on all the interactions you have, and will have with them), you can still add these individuals as contact records, or link them to existing contact records in your database.


Streamlined Notification 

You can now effortlessly contact the persons to notify via email or mail merge!
Details captured about the person that needs to be notified,


Can be used to Send Emails


Or create Mail Merge letters.



You can also set up email notifications so members of your team are automatically notified whenever an in honor of or in memory of donation is received.


Online Donation Support

These changes are ready to work with our Online Donation Webforms, so you can start taking advantage of all these great benefits right away!


If you're already making use of the tributes feature in your Sumac Online Donation Webforms, everything will continue to work smoothly, and there's nothing extra you need to do.
Don’t have Sumac Online Donations? Contact sales@silentpartnersoftware.com to learn more!

Better Searching, Better Reporting

Thanks to these new fields, you can effortlessly locate tribute donations!


These new fields offer a fresh approach for searching and generating donation reports!

Suspected Duplicate Detection Enhancement

Earlier this year, we introduced automated duplicate detection in Sumac to improve your data accuracy and overall database quality.
In this release, we’re introducing improvements that will help you configure the duplicate detection logic on how you and your team enter data in your database!


Here are some benefits of this update:
  • More Accurate Results: Reduce the volume of suspected duplicates by adjusting how stringent your duplicate detection logic is.
  • Time Savings: With more accurate results, you spend less time sorting suspected duplicate contacts and more time doing good!
  • Prevent Errors: Reduce the risk of duplicating work or missing steps in your process by ensuring all activities and interactions are saved in the right contact record.
  • Improved Reporting: A more accurate database means your reports are reliable. 
Sumac Administrators can configure their Suspected Duplicate Logic by going to Utilities > Preferences > CRM and clicking on the Suspected Duplicate Logic Tab.
This can also be accessed by clicking the gear icon in the Review Duplicates window.


We also added a new way for you to filter your suspected duplicates list by Name, Address, email, phone, or by the date that a contact record was added to the database!


Updated Transaction Logs

We're continuing to help nonprofits rest easy with an update to Sumac’s Transaction Logs!


Additional options have been added to allow you to track changes in more places in your database. And an updated user interface has also been added to allow you to find what you need and make changes more intuitively!

We have enabled transaction logging on all databases by default so that every  customer can take advantage of this update.

With this update, you gain the following benefits:
  • Better Audit Trails: Ensures the accuracy and reliability of your database by recording all changes and updates.
  • Improved Accountability: Encourages responsible data management practices by tracking ownership of data changes.
  • Enhanced Privacy and Security: Helps detect unauthorized activity by monitoring data access and changes.
  • Forensics: Helps investigate data-related incidents to detect unauthorized access.
  • Support Compliance Requirements: By maintaining detailed records of data changes.

Continued UI Updates

Following through on some of the interface improvements we have started over the summer, we continuing to provide you with a great user experience with improved consistency to the layout and font sizing in the following areas:
  • Search Builder
  • Password Entry and OK or Cancel dialog boxes
  • Analyze and Reports selection areas
  • User Profile settings window

Sumac Rendering On (HD) Screens

In this release, we are making sure Sumac can support your future technology upgrades by improving how Sumac Desktop renders on ultra high resolution (4K) screens.
This change reduces instances where text, buttons, and input fields appear too small, or misaligned.
This is an ongoing effort, so if you have an ultra high resolution monitor and notice any other areas that need to be updated, let us know!

We would love to hear your feedback about the changes made in this release.  Please let us know at product@silentpartnersoftware.com





    Our products got an upgrade!



    Some screenshots and help videos have been made using older versions of our products. Though your version's colours and themes may appear different than what you see here, the instructions, links and advice in this article are still accurate and useful!

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