Donation Director

Donation Director Optional Modules

Donation Director's optional modules are purchased separately from the main application and have their own support costs. We separate these modules from Donation Director because in many cases they are not needed by all of our clients and it allows us to make Donation Director more affordable.

Accounting Interface

Simplicity is the key feature of the Accounting Interface. Currently the only accounting software supported is QuickBooks®.

All transactions that are keyed into Donation Director can potentially be imported into QuickBooks. This includes new transactions, adjustments, and write-offs. What you will see in QuickBooks are journal entries that are associated with a customer named Donation Director.

After purchasing the Accounting Interface, a Cascade Data Solutions support specialist will assist you in the initial setup. This process involves connecting the Accounting Interface with QuickBooks, matching up the Donation Director chart of accounts with your QuickBooks chart of accounts, assigning your QuickBooks chart of accounts to your appeal categories and/or designations and if necessary, assigning classes.

Chart of accounts can be assigned via a three tier hierarchy in Donation Director, depending on your preferences. The top level involves assignments at the Designation level. The second level involves assignments at the Appeal/Category level. And lastly, you can make assignments at the Donor Account level. The Accounting Interface will always use the highest level assignment defined for a particular donor and transaction.

The Accounting Interface allows for a high degree of flexibility. Importing is as simple as specifying a transaction date range, a batch date range or a batch number. You can review the transactions that are pulled up prior to actually importing them into QuickBooks. You can also make simple changes to which chart of account item or class the transaction is to be assigned. Checks and cash can be assigned to un-deposited funds for deposits through QuickBooks. Or, if you don't use un-deposited funds, we have a deposit slip report which will match the transactions you assign to your bank account.

You decide how often you want to import your transactions into QuickBooks. You can import every day, every week, or once a month. For performance and manageability reasons, however, it's best to limit the number of transactions being imported at any given time.

After the fact, you can stay in sync by running the Post Import Report. This report compares your import log with the transaction information in Donation Director and QuickBooks. Any exceptions would indicate that something was changed in one location but not the other.

Requirements for the Accounting Interface are as follows:

The system requirements are the same as Donation Director's.
The Accounting Interface must have access to the Donation Director Data file, either on the same PC or over a network.
The Accounting Interface must be installed on the same PC as QuickBooks.
For best performance, have QuickBooks running with the correct company file open.

*QuickBooks is a registered trademark and service mark of Intuit Inc. in the United States and other countries. Donation Director's Accounting Interface is designed for use with the 2005-2010 versions of either QuickBooks Pro or QuickBooks Premier software only.

Smart Import Routine

Our smart import routine is designed to import donor account information as well as donor transactions from sources outside of Donation Director. The routine allows for careful review of the information being imported to minimize the creation of duplicate records.

Credit Card Processing

Donation Director now supports automatic credit card processing! We have teamed up with X-Charge to provide our clients with an affordable option to process credit card donations. All it takes is purchasing the optional Credit Card Processing Module for Donation Director and setting up a merchant account through X-Charge. We chose X-Charge because their credit card processing fees were the lowest of those we looked at and they also allowed us to integrate their system as closely as possible with Donation Director. This integration makes processing credit cards easy and very secure.

In addition to simply keying in credit card donations and processing them on the spot, you can also set up a pledge from a donor to automatically bill their credit card on their payment billing schedule. This keeps you from having to manage mailing out reminders when payments are due (or past due) or from having to manually charge a credit card using a card processing machine. Also, you limit your liability as there is no reason to keep credit cards numbers on file. The Credit Card Processing Module can keep card numbers stored for you on the remote X-Charge servers. X-Charge meets the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or PCI DSS. Only an alias of the donor’s card number and the last 4 digits are stored in the Donation Director database. This makes your donor’s credit card information as secure as possible.

For more information about PCI DSS certification and credit card security please visit: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/.

X-Charge also supports a full range of credit card processing options. If you need to process credit cards outside of Donation Director, X-Charge will work for that too, and very likely save you money over your current credit card processing provider.

Click here for critical information regarding credit card processing for current users of Donation Director.

Multiple Database Module

Our Multiple Database Module allows for more than one nonprofit's donors to be stored in Donation Director. Each nonprofit's records are completely separated from the others and each are protected with individual user login IDs and passwords. Two or more nonprofits could conceivably share a single Donation Director installation using this module.

Designed for use with QuickBooks®