Read below for a list of frequently asked questions pertaining to the Recurring Payments/Transactions functionality in Kindful.
Overview
This article is an FAQ about Recurring Transactions in Kindful.
Linked Articles:
- VIDEO: Recurring Transactions
A donor created a Recurring Payment for the 31st of the month. If the Month Does Not have 31 days, when will the Donation Process?
For this, the donation would process on the last date of the month for any months with fewer than 31 days.
A donor created an Annual Recurring Donation. Does this charge on the Day it is Created?
Yes, the first recurrence of a quarterly or annual recurring transaction will bill immediately.
Can I set my Campaign(s) up so that they are Recurring Only?
Yes, you can. On the specific campaign edit page that you wish to have this set on, you can check the box to "Disable One-time payments" found in the top section of the edit page.
Can I change a donor's Recurring Donation Amount or Schedule without having to cancel and start the recurrence over again?
Yes, you can. On the contact profile, click on the Payment Info tab along the top of the profile page. Find the recurring transaction you wish to edit, and click the Edit button to make changes to it. Change the amount, bill date, the next recurrence date, and more.
Of Note: If you change the recurring transaction's bill date, but do not change the "next recurrence", the donor will be charged one last time on the original bill date. After that the "next recurrence" will change automatically.
If your donor does not want to give on the former bill date again, you will have to change the "next recurrence" date at the same time as the "bill date."
You can verify when the next recurrence date will be on their donor profile by looking under "Recurring Transactions".
Is there a way to remove the Quarterly Option from the Dropdown list when a donor is setting up their Recurring on the Main Donation page?
Yes, you can. In your Settings > Fundraising Settings > Transaction Settings, you can choose which dates to show or not on your donation pages by selecting options in the "Override recurring donation options" section at the top of the page.. If you do not see this option available, please contact our Support Team so we can enable this ability for you. Please note that this change will affect all of your donation pages.
What is a Recurring Transaction Schedule?
The “Recurring Transaction Schedule,” is in control when a recurring transaction processes. When it is automatically processed, the schedule will tell the payment gateway that it’s time to run a charge. When using a manual recurring transaction, this allows certain filters like “With overdue recurring” to work. A recurring transaction is created activity will appear on the contact profile and you will need to create a new transaction every time they pay it. You can then apply that transaction to the Manual Recurring Transaction schedule via a drop down menu on the "add new" transaction page. 
To edit this schedule go to the contact profile, click on the Payment Info tab along the top of the profile page. Find the recurring transaction you wish to edit, and click the Edit button to make changes to it. Change the amount, bill date, the next recurrence date, and more.
How can I find a List of who has Signed up for a Recurring Donation?
Head to the Contacts page and filter "Has Recurring Transaction: Yes" to get your list of contacts with a recurring donation on their profile.
How can I find a List of New Recurring Donors this week, month, quarter, etc?
Head to the Activities page and filter "Activity Type: New Recurring" to isolate these events. You can also add the filter "This Month" or "This Week" to further isolate the time frame. You can then create a report if you'd like to export this to a csv or pdf.
How can I Find the Number of Recurring Donors our Organization has?
In this case, the most reliable way to see this information may be through an activities report.
Use a filter to show recurring donors for the "XYZ" campaign and their recurring activities. Filter "By Campaign: XYZ" and "Has Recurring: Yes" and "Activity Type: New Recurring, Canceled Recurring". Use all of these filters to find new, current, and canceled recurring transactions.
How Can I Best Project Anticipated Revenue from Upcoming Recurring Donations to my organization for Future Planning?
One tool that would be at your disposal for this would be the "Recurring Transactions" widget at the bottom of the Dashboard in your Kindful account. This tool will project this month and next month, although if most of your recurring transactions are monthly, then this may allow to create projections further out.
A Donor is wanting to make a Donation for Multiple Consecutive Months. How can it be stopped after those months?
The donor cannot set an end to their recurring donation on their side; however, you can as an Admin.
If you want to give your donors the ability to state how many transactions they would like to give before it ends, use a Campaign Custom Field to ask the donor something like, "How many recurring donations would you like to make with this commitment?" and give them the option to enter a number. You can set up the answer field as text or as a select value.
It makes sense in this scenario to also ask a question like this: "Would you like this recurring donation to end after a set amount of donations?" with the answer values of "Yes, I would like this to end after a set amount of donations" and "No, I would not like this to end after a set amount of donations". Setting up an additional question like this will allow you to run a filter on the Activities page for all activities with these questions answered, using the filter "With Answer: Yes, I would like this to end after a set amount of donations". The resulting transactions would be the ones you would need to reference to see how many transactions they would like to make before ending the recurrence.
You can then take this information, and head to their profile, click on the Payment Info tab and edit the recurring donation's section titled, "
How can I Edit a monthly Recurring Transaction to Skip a Month's Payment?
On the Contact Profile, navigate to the find the Payment Info tab, and scroll down to the Recurring Transactions blocks. In the block of the recurring transaction you wish to change the date, click on the Edit button. In the window that pops up, you can edit the recurring transaction and change the "Next Recurrence". This will control the next date that a payment processes, allowing a donor to skip a payment, while maintaining the original recurring schedule. Save that change, and it will be applied.
For example, a donor may have a recurring transaction that is set to run on the 1st of every month. If the donor makes a transaction on August 1, and wants to skip September, follow the steps above, and in the "Next Recurrence" block, set that to be October 1. Doing this will simply skip September's payment, but will keep the ongoing schedule in tact.
How can I Cancel a Recurring Transaction and Verify it has been Canceled?
We have an article on this as well you can find here. On the Contact Profile, navigate to the find the Payment Info tab, and scroll down to the Recurring Transactions blocks. In the block of the recurring transaction you wish to cancel, click on cancel.
How to Verify it is Canceled
You may want to double check your donor's profile to see if a recurring transaction was canceled. Perhaps the donor canceled it on their donor profile and asked you to verify. Here are a few places to check that this went through properly.
- Check the Recurring Transactions in Payment Info: When you go to their payment info on their profile you should see that there are no current recurring transactions or if they had multiple recurring transactions, you will should only see the one(s) that have not been canceled.
- Check their Recent Activity for the Cancelation: Navigate to their profile overview and under "Recent Activity" you should see an activity for the canceled recurring transaction.
- Verify the Cancelation Date: You can click "View All" to be taken to the Activities page to see more about this and other recent transactions. You may want to check the cancelation date. If it is after the next recurrence date, then one more recurring transaction will likely go through if it hasn't already. For example if the recurring transaction was to come out every June 22nd and it was canceled on June 23rd, even if the donor has not seen the charge in their bank yet, they will still be charged for this month's recurring transaction. A refund could then be issued after the payment is processed according to your organizations policies, though the cancelation is complete for future transactions.
4. Verify the Next Recurrence: Go again to their contact profile Overview. Under "Recurring Transactions" you should either see only the remaining recurring transaction, or if they only had one and you have now canceled it you should see "no recurring transactions". The "next recurrence" is a grey date under the upcoming recurring transaction which tells when they will next be charged. Verify that there is either no date or that the date you see is what is expected after the recent cancelation.
5. You can also filter for all your canceled or active recurring transactions using activity filters. See our FAQ below on filters related to recurring or see our glossary . (Of note: you can press "ctrl" + "F" simultaneously on your keyboard to pull up a search bar on any web page. You could do this on the activities filter article and type "recurring" to make it search for and highlight instances of the word on your page. This can help you see all related filters quickly.)
How Can I Refund a Recurring Transaction?
What Are the Activity Filters Related to Recurring Transactions?
- Automatic Recurring Transaction Schedule - Shows the recurring transaction schedules that use a payment method to automatically process the payment
- Manual Recurring Transaction Schedule - Shows the recurring transaction schedules that require a manual entry
- Activity Type: New Recurring, Updated Recurring, Canceled Recurring - Shows the Recurring transaction schedules that have been created, updated, or canceled (hint you can invert the canceled recurring to find recurring transactions that have not been canceled. See our article on inverting filters here.)
(Of Note: “Updated” recurring transaction activities are only created when an automatic recurring transaction schedule has been updated) - Transaction Type: Recurring - Shows all recurring transactions that were automatically processed via a payment method stored on the contact’s profile
- Assigned to Recurring - Shows all transactions that are assigned to a recurring schedule, both automatically processed and manually entered.
- Expiring Recurring - Displays “created” or “updated” activities related to the recurring transaction occurring within the specified (filtered for) number of days.
- Recurring On - Find recurring transaction schedules that will recur on a specific date
What Are the Contact Filters Related to Recurring Transactions?
- Has Recurring Transaction - Shows contacts that currently have a recurring transaction schedule set
- Has Overdue Manual Recurring - Shows contacts with a manual recurring transaction that is past due
What Are the Available Report Columns Related to Recurring Transactions?
- Activity Type (Activity)
- Amount (Activity)
- Campaign Name (Activity)
- Date Created (Activity)
- Recurring Payment Number (Activity)
- Recurring Transaction Progress (Activity)
- Recurring Transaction Frequency (Activity)
What if There Isn't a Payment Method on File for the Contact Record I Select?
First, go to the contact’s profile to add a payment method, then schedule the recurring transaction. Alternatively, you could schedule a manually entered recurring transaction if you expect the payment to be sent to you via cash or check each month.
Do Manually Entered Donations show on the Dashboard in the Upcoming Recurring gifts section?
Yes, these are included in your upcoming section.
If I Merge two Contacts and one of them has a Recurring Donation, does that Recurring Donation Roll into the Merged Contact?
Yes, when you merge two records, their billing information (card profiles, etc.) and the associated recurring information merges into the primary record.
What if I have the Payment Details, but I Don't have an Email Address for the Contact on which I Wish to Create the Recurring Donation?
You can set this up since you are an admin user, even without an email. First, create a contact profile for this donor, via +Add New > Contact. You don't have to add any email address.
Once this is done, visit that contact profile and click the Payment Info tab. There you can add the credit card information, then create a recurring transaction.
Why don't I see an "Edit" Button on my Contact's Recurring Transaction Schedule?
Recurring Transaction Schedules in Kindful can be created in 2 different ways: it either originates inside Kindful, or originates outside of Kindful and is imported into Kindful in one of 2 different ways: (1) via our "Stripe Create" data integration or (2) via PayPal.
Admin users are able to edit Recurring Transaction Schedules that originate in Kindful. However, if the Recurring Transaction Schedule was created outside of Kindful, then Kindful does not have access or permissions to edit that Recurring Transaction Schedule.
In that instance, you will not see an "Edit" button for the Recurring Transaction Schedule on the Payment Info tab of the Contact profile in question.
I see a Declined Donation in Kindful but a Successful Donation in my Gateway. What does this mean?
The most common explanation is your donor has setup multiple recurring donations, sometimes inadvertently. This can happen if they try and create a donor account without confirming it, which might make them want to create a new recurring transaction. The payment gateway will not show the details as clearly as Kindful will, so it is advised to check the donor profile in Kindful of the contact to see if they have multiple recurrences setup and remind your donor to click the "confirmation" in their email from Kindful when they create a donor account.
How Can I Create a Report that Shows Monthly Donors?
For this, you could use the contact filter Has Recurring Transaction: Yes:
This will show you all donors who have an active recurring donation. From there you are able to click the Create Report option on the right task bar area. This will pull up the report creation screen where you can name the report, select the page layout(portrait or landscape), and select the columns you wish to be visible on the report.
Of note here, if you select Standard Activity from the Pre-Selected Column Set dropdown, this will automatically fill in all of the donors basic info.
How Many Attempts are Made on a Declining Recurring Transaction before it Cancels Automatically?
You have the ability to edit this setting in your Settings > Fundraising Settings > Transaction Settings.
If left blank, Kindful will try 6 times before canceling a recurring transaction.
By default, a declined transaction will attempt to process for two additional consecutive days. If unsuccessful, the process will start again on the next recurring date, running the same cycle. If the transaction is still declined after these two cycles of attempts (six total occurrences), it will be canceled.
For example, if a donor has a recurring donation scheduled on 1st of every month, and it fails on January 1st, it will try again on January 2nd. If it declines on the 2nd, it will try again on January 3rd. If it declines on the 3rd, it will move to February. If the pattern of declines repeats in February, and the setting is left blank (the default setting), the transaction will cancel automatically.
If you wish to enter in a number in this field, you will want to enter in increments of 3.
- 3 = 1 month
- 6 = 2 months
- 9 = 3 months
- etc.
Of Note: If you have a recurring donation that has failed three times and has moved to the next billing cycle, you can go to the donor's profile and perform a one-time transaction charge from their profile. Doing this will not impact the scheduled recurring donation.
Does Kindful Automatically Notify the Donor when their Recurring Transaction is Canceled?
Kindful does not automatically notify donors when a recurring transaction has been canceled.
However, you could possibly set up some communication around this through the acknowledgements tool. For example, you can target canceled recurrings using the "Activity Type: Canceled Recurring" filter.
Is there a Way to be Alerted when a Donor's Card Declines Enough Times so that the Recurring Charge is Canceled?
In this case, a Scheduled Report could be a great option if you only want to see when recurring transactions are canceled. These reports would be automatically emailed to you.
For example, this filter would let you set up a daily scheduled report:
A Donor has a Recurring Donation and an Open Pledge. Will the Recurring Donation Automatically Deduct from the Open Pledge?
If you set up the recurring transaction as an admin, the recurring transaction will not count towards the pledge. If a donor creates a recurring transaction on their own, but is not logged in, the recurring transaction will not count towards the pledge. If a donor is logged into their Kindful donor account, and they create a recurring transaction that is set to draw from the pledge, then it can count towards the pledge.
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