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DONATION Changelog

What's new in DONATION 4.00b

Oct 4, 2017
  • Changed the installation program to automatically fix problems that a few users were having, where for some reason it could not overwrite files in the program's installation directory, so the install failed.

New in DONATION 4.00 (Oct 4, 2017)

  • This version uses a newer version of PowerBuilder, the program we use to create DONATION, and as such we are giving this release a new main version number (4.00).
  • When converting from Membership Plus databases, added handling for two never-before seen problems in the Membership Plus data: too-large internal Fund IDs (a number you don't see) that don't fit in the internal donation category numbers in DONATION (that you also don't see), and missing funds (donation categories) for donations. The donations with missing funds will be assigned your first donation category.
  • Fixed a very unusual problem when creating Bank Deposits, where you click the Deposit Slip button and it won't do it because it says the total cash from the donations being deposited doesn't match the Cash Count, even though it says the amounts are the same!
  • Fixed the Membership Plus conversion so it can now work with Membership Plus version 5.0d, which has an internal version number of 4.93, which made the program think it wasn't at least version 5 (the minimum version it knows how to convert).

New in DONATION 3.86 (Aug 3, 2017)

  • Added both Custom Reports and a section listing all of your Memorized Reports at the end of the list in the Report Browser, unless you are using the Lite version that doesn't include Custom or Memorized Reports.
  • Memorized Reports can now have optional Descriptions added to them, in addition to their nameThe Descriptions can be added when you are memorizing them, or on the Memorized Reports window itself.
  • Added some details about a couple of powerful free WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editors that you can use from our internal mail-merge editor, for things that cannot be done in the internal editor, to the page Configuring an Alternate HTML Editor.
  • Fixed a bug in the Database ? Switch Databases window where uses of the Browse button always gave a message that the selected file wasn't in the correct directory.
  • In the Reports ? Memorized Reports window, after running a report, and closing the window(s) doing that took you to, you return to the Memorized Reports window(Those other windows can be the main Reports window, or the SQL Select window.) Fixed a weakness where the information about the list of reports in the Memorized Reports window is not updated on that returnThat could be necessary if you made changes and re-memorized the report in one of the windows you were taken toWithout this fix, re-running the same memorized report immediately would ignore those changesAlso, any new memorized reports with new names would not have appeared on the list in this window when you returned to it.
  • Fixed a bug when you use the Delete button In the Memorized Reports window, where you got an error message and the report didn't disappear from the list(It actually was deleted though.)

New in DONATION 3.72b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a rare but bad bug in emailing receipts, letters or statements: If you were using mail-merge receipts or letters, and you edited the merged documents, and they were for more than one donor, and then you chose to email them, you would be prompted for whether to save the edited changes before continuing. If you answered Yes, the documents for all donors would be included in the PDF attachment to the first donor receiving an email (a bad privacy violation!). Fortunately this had only happened to one user, to the best of our knowledge, because it's a fairly unusual combination of steps! (This could also happen with unusual merge documents even if you didn't edit the merged documents before trying to email them - that is also prevented by this fix.)

New in DONATION 3.72 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • All backup filenames now have a time component as well as a date component, such as DONATION-YYYY-MM-DD.HH.MM.SS.DB.GBK, where YYYY-MM-DD is the date the backup was made, and HH.MM.SS is the time
  • There was a weakness in the handling of bank deposits, in that you couldn't have deposits to two different banks on the same date, and when doing reports on old bank deposits with Reports, Bank Deposit, One Deposit Details, it always showed them as being done on the bank that you last did a bank deposit on. That has been fixed for bank deposits recorded after installing this version. (Reports on bank deposits made before installing this version will still all show up as being on the last-used bank before this upgrade.)
  • When you start DONATION with an empty database (on a first install, or re-install on a new or rebuilt computer) the DONATION Initial Startup window now has an additional option to restore from an Internet backup, if you have one, and know your Unique ID for Internet Backups and the Backup Encryption Password you were using for such backups. (This change actually appeared in version 3.71c, but we forgot to note that fact at the time.)
  • On the Reports, Donor sub-menu, the report options Mailing Labels, Mailing Labels with Member/Envelope # and Envelopes all now have a new option to print only for the currently selected donor on the main window
  • Fixed a minor bug: the VCR buttons in the Reports viewing window were being disabled for Reports, Donation, Details, One Page per Donor, and Reports, Donation, Category Totals, One Page per Donor, when there really were multiple pages. Now they are enabled in that case
  • In the Help topic for Finding a Donor, clarified that accented characters cannot be found by the normal method of just typing in the Donor List. Instead you have to use the Ctrl+F Find Donor window to do that
  • Fixed a bug when doing Receipt à Duplicate/Corrected by Number, where if all of the donations included in that receipt had been deleted, so it should have been reprinted with a new amount of $0, the program could crash

New in DONATION 3.71c (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug introduced in version 3.71 - if you were registering for the first time with Tools, Register Online, and you hadn't previously set up an email address with Maintenance, Email Sending Configuration, the email address field would be both empty and uneditable, and you would not be able to submit the registration because the program would ask you to enter an email address!

New in DONATION 3.71b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fix a bug added recently: If you are using the evaluation version, and from the Evaluation and Licensing window that comes up when you start the program, you click "Request License Key" or "Request Key for Extension of Evaluation Period", the program crashes with an error message. (Those both still worked if you went into the program with the Continue button, and called up that window from the Tools à Request or Install License Key menu option.)
  • Some improvements to the messaging if you try to do a backup or restore on a drive letter that is not available (e.g. a USB memory key). Also improvements to various other bits of messaging in the program

New in DONATION 3.71 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Added a Copy Prev button to the One Date Batch Entry window. For donors who give the same amount each week, that allows you to quickly copy in that amount (including for donations split between multiple donation categories) as the current date's donation
  • Also on the One Date Batch Entry window, changed the hotkey for Split All from Alt+T (which didn't work, because it was already the hotkey for the Totals by Category button) to Alt+P
  • Added a Database, Import, From Geminon menu option, for importing data directly from a Geminon database file. (Geminon is a Canadian church software program that went out of business several years ago and is no longer supported.)
  • Added a menu option Maintenance, Change Password, Read Only Password, that allows you to set a Read Only Password. Entering DONATION with that password means you can view data and reports, and create letters etc., but not change any data, generate receipts (other than sample ones) etc.
  • The top sub-report in Reports, Bank Deposit, One Deposit Details, showing the details, had somehow become too narrow, causing longer values in the Cheque # / Paid By field to be cut off. Made it the proper width again so that would not happen
  • Fixed some problems that can happen in the installation program if you are installing into a non-standard location for the program files, or re-installing to one location when a prior install went to a different location

New in DONATION 3.70b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug where if you move or resize the main window after it opens, and then do something that causes the data in the main window to be re-retrieved (like changing the working year, or restoring a backup) the window goes back to the position and size it was when it first opened

New in DONATION 3.70 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • When you are emailing receipts, letters or statements (but only mail-merge receipts, not the regular built-in ones), or emailing newsletters, you now have the option of inserting merge fields into the Subject line and text Body of the emails, as well as in the merged document (for receipts, letters and statements) that is being attached as a PDF. That lets you personalize those emails
  • Also when you are emailing receipts, letters or statements, or emailing newsletters, you can send the Body of the email as HTML, if you are very familiar with it, by having "" (without the quotes) as the very first thing in the Body, and ending it with "". Of course, other appropriate changes have to be made to make it valid HTML that will display well! HTML body text can be viewed in a web browser with a new Show in Web Browser button that appears if the body starts with ""
  • In the mail-merge editor, the default template documents installed by the program now show thin grey dotted borders around all table cells, to help you see how the document is structured and assist in any editing you do. Those borders disappear when you print the merged document, save it to PDF, or email it - they are only visible on the screen. For existing edited documents where those borders are not shown, they can be added with a new menu option Edit, Show Table Borders on Screen
  • Fix a bug where if a mail-merge template document is over 32K in size, any merge codes after that point are ignored when you do the merge
  • For reports that prompt for something (like a date, or range of dates) added a Rerun button to the report-viewing window, that lets you respecify those prompted-for values, and redisplay the report with your new values
  • Made the report viewing window resizable
  • For Canadian (English, French only and bilingual) corrected or duplicate/replacement receipts, that create a new receipt with a new number and reprint the existing one with a $0 amount, the new receipt is now displayed first, before the reprinted replaced original. That should avoid some confusion
  • If you were correcting or replacing a receipt for Canada, and you told it not to change the receipt status, and you had changed the number of donations included in the receipt from one to more than one or vice versa, there was a bug. The bug was that it didn't change the wording "Date of donation: [date]" to "Year of donations: [year]" or vice versa as the number of included donations changed. ("Date of donation" is only supposed to be used when exactly one donation is included in the receipt.)
  • In Reports, Donor, Addresses and Address by Member/Envelope Number, added the email address to the report
  • Added Reports, Donor, Contact Information, that shows the name, phone number and email address for each donor, or each donor with donations within a specified range of dates
  • Fixed a bug: The French-only built-in receipts had a number printing at the top right of the page that did not belong there
  • Fixed a bug in the Bank Deposit details report (available from the Maintenance, Create Bank Deposits window, or via Reports, Bank Deposit, One Deposit Details). The bug was that the Summary by Paid By sub-report within the report could include amounts for donations that should have been excluded, because their donation category had no configured matching accounting account
  • Fixed a subtle bug that appeared in three reports under Reports, Donor: Mailing Labels, Mailing Labels with Member/Envelope #, and Envelopes. The bug was that they had an invisible field total_amount, which could be filtered on or exported, which was always the total donations for that donor in the current year. It should have been the total donations within the selected range of dates, if you chose to only generate labels or envelopes for donors with donations within a selected range of dates. That has been corrected
  • Added a Save SQL button to the reports-viewing window, which can be used in the process of Loading and Saving SQL for Reports
  • Fixed a problem introduced by version 3.69b, where if the program tries to send an email and is unsuccessful, if it offers to show you a log with the error, that log may not be informative (because it was actually the log of the wrong action)
  • Fixed an inconsistency between the program itself and the installation program about how they find the program's Data Directory - a couple of users were finding that the different methods used, which we thought always gave the same answer, did not do so
  • Improved the wording in the Evaluation and Licensing window (accessed via Tools, Request or Install License Key) when you are already licensed. If it tells you that your eligibility for support and upgrades has expired, and you need to pay to renew that, it makes it clear that this is "according to your most recently installed license key", which may or may not be correct. (You might have paid more recently, but just not requested, received and installed an updated license key yet.)
  • Fixed a bug in Letters, Email Newsletters, where the program would crash after a successful set of emails, if you answered "Yes" when it reported on how many emails it sent and asked you whether to close that window now
  • In the One Date Batch Entry window, in the Category drop-down, moved "" to be above the empty row, so if you have no default 2nd or 3rd donation categories set in the Options window for batch entry, you use Split Donor, and you try to use the down arrow on your keyboard to move to your desired category, it doesn't immediately find "" and pop up the window for adding a donation category. (Selecting categories by their first letter is faster anyways: see Keyboard Shortcuts.)
  • Added some content to the Help page on the Data Directory, to avoid possible confusions about the Data Directory itself versus its Data subdirectory, and about the "Documents" versus "Public Documents" subdirectory under C:\Users\Public in recent versions of Windows
  • Hopefully fixed a problem that occurred very occasionally (we believe on 64-bit computers) when the installation program tried to install the novaPDF PDF printer, and it would not install, giving the message "Error 1 installing novaPDF"
  • Fixed a bug that only occurred on a few reports where the VCR-style paging controls could be disabled on multiple-page reports. (They are only supposed to be disabled on reports that are only one page long.)
  • Enhanced an error message for a rare situation where the novaPDF printer can't write to its settings file, to explain how to resolve the problem

New in DONATION 3.69b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • In the internal mail-merge editor, split the Insert, Page Break menu option into three sub-menu options under that: At Start of Document, At Current Cursor Position, and At End of Document. This was done because in some mail-merge documents, particularly receipts, inserting the cursor at the apparent start or end of the document and using the existing Insert, Page Break menu option didn't always work properly at all
  • Improved the messages you receive if the program tries to send an email and is unsuccessful, to be clearer and more helpful about what the problem likely is, and how to fix it. (This applies whether you are doing so from the Test button in the Maintenance, Email Sending Configuration window, or trying to actually email a letter, receipt, report or database backup.)

New in DONATION 3.69 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Made a number of improvements to the File, One Date Donation Entry (Batch Entry) window:
  • The Options window has new drop-down lists for First split donor category and Second split donor category, that control the donation categories for rows for donors added by the Split Donor button
  • There is a new Split All button on the actual data entry window, that brings up a prompt to select a donation category, and then adds one row for each displayed donor, with an empty Amount and the selected Category
  • The Add Donor button now works, bringing up a window on which you can add a new donor and then continue entering the batch of donations
  • All controls on the Options window now have accelerators (underlined letters, so you can select that control with Alt plus that letter)
  • Added a note in the Help topic Non-Receiptable Donors and Donations to clarify that the codes that can make donors and donations not be included in receipts are case-sensitive, so for instance while "Non-Receiptable" works, "Non-receiptable" or "non-receiptable" would not work
  • In the Help topic Pledges in Donation, added a new sub-section on "Entry of Donations towards Pledges" to clarify that aspect

New in DONATION 3.68b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Added the ability to specify a range of dates to report on in Reports, Donation, Summary by Date and Category
  • Made an improvement in Reports, Donation, Summary by Dollar Ranges so that adding a Filter doesn't run the risk of breaking the report by making the dollar ranges get out of order and sometimes be duplicated
  • With the new ability to configure an alternate HTML editor, with some external editors the file format could be somewhat damaged, causing merges to not work properly, if you returned to the built-in editor after saving changes in the external editor, and then did not make any further changes in the internal editor and save them. That has been fixed
  • The program was making a check on startup that it could find a unique identifier for your computer, and giving a message to you if it could not do so. (This was going to be needed for an upcoming feature.) A few users were getting that message, so some additional code was added to find other sorts of unique identifiers if the original version wasn't working

New in DONATION 3.68 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • The built-in and template mail-merge receipts for the U.S.A., and the built-in receipt for English Canada, were all re-arranged to make them fit better into standard #10 single-window envelopes. (The template mail-merge receipt for English Canada already seemed to be fine.)
  • Added a section to the Help page on Emailing Newsletters about handling unsubscribes. Also added a sentence that mentions unsubscribing, to the default text body to be sent with the email newsletter, which you are prompted with as a suggested starting point the first time you send one
  • In the mail-merge editor, when you use the menu options Insert, Logo Image or Insert, Signature Image, if they are a multiple of the standard suggested sizes, the program now gives you an option, to choose between inserting them at their actual size, or scaling them down to that standard suggested size
  • All signatures embedded in the template mail-merge receipts and other letters installed by DONATION are now sized to the official size for the signature image, 166 x 39 pixels
  • Changed the way logo and signature images are inserted into the HTML of mail-merge letters and receipts to be more proper modern HTML, so that they would work better in some external HTML editors
  • Added a new Actions, Configure Alternate HTML Editor menu option in the internal editor for mail-merge letters and receipts, that allows you to configure another external editor to be used. Doing that configuration causes a new Actions menu option and toolbar item to appear, for editing with that editor
  • In the Help section on the Details Table in the Help page on Mail Merge Fields, added a sub-section "Changing the Font Size for the Details and Summary Tables", because obvious ways of doing that do not work, so you need detailed instructions if you need to do so
  • Fixed a small problem where some of the mail-merge template files installed with the program could come up incorrectly in certain external editors due to an incorrect character set code

New in DONATION 3.67c (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a minor problem in the installation program, when it was being used to update a version prior to 3.66, it gave a long message that was all one long paragraph, rather than being nicely formatted

New in DONATION 3.67b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a problem where if you used the Database, Delete All Data menu option, it didn't reload your mail-merge letters and receipts (and any memorized reports) back into the database afterwards, so you got error messages if you tried to use them. Also fixed any other situations where the mail-merge letters and receipts were missing from the database

New in DONATION 3.67 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Added the new Letters, Email Newsletters menu option, for emailing a fixed PDF file (usually a newsletter) to all donors, with an option for filtering the donors to select which ones it goes to
  • In the Reports, Donor, Mailing Labels, Reports, Donor, Mailing Labels with Member/Envelope # and Reports, Donor, Envelopes mailing label and envelope reports, added a checkbox for "Skip donors with email addresses". This allows you to mail out newsletters by postal mail to those donors to whom you could not email them with Letters, Email Newsletters, because they have no email address recorded in the program

New in DONATION 3.66d (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug where Reports, Bank Deposit, One Deposit Details could sometimes show only the headings but no data for the final part of it, the Transaction for the Accounting Program. Also, redesigned that sub-report for the transaction for the accounting program to be clearer, with separate columns for the deposit amount (the bank account) and the split amounts
  • Fixed a bug for brand new installations, which also occurred if you created a new empty database with the Database, Switch Databases menu option, where the letters were not imported into the database until you had exited DONATION and then started it once more

New in DONATION 3.66c (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug in the mail-merge editor where the Insert, Logo Image and Insert, Signature Image menu options could in some cases end up doing nothing

New in DONATION 3.66b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug where trying to email Gift in Kind receipts for either of the Quebec styles (as set in the Maintenance, Receipt Options window) caused the program to give an error message and exit. (This didn't happen with the mail-merge version of the receipts, only regular ones.)
  • Made some improvements to the Help page Move the Program from One Computer to Another, relevant to the changes in version 3.66

New in DONATION 3.66 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Mail merge letters and receipts are now primarily stored in the database, rather than in separate HTML files on your hard drive, so they no longer have to be backed up and restored separately. The first time this version (or any subsequent version) is run when you have previously been using version 3.65 or earlier, all template letters and receipts are picked up from your hard drive and inserted into the database. If you are using DONATION on multiple computers, this is done on each computer, though only newer documents are updated when a given one is already present in the database. This does also mean that template letters and receipts are specific to each database, if you are switching databases
  • Memorized reports are now stored in the database, rather than in separate files on your hard drive, so they no longer have to be backed up and restored separately. The first time this version (or any subsequent version) is run when you have previously been using version 3.65 or earlier, all memorized reports are picked up from your hard drive and inserted into the database. If you are using DONATION on multiple computers, this is done on each computer, though only newer reports are updated when a given report is already present in the database. This does also mean that memorized reports are specific to each database, if you are switching databases
  • Some changes in the way the Letters, One Letter window and Letters, Mass Mailing window display, and the Reports, Memorized Reports window displays, were made in association with the above two points
  • In the Reports, Memorized Reports window, added a Delete button to delete reports that are no longer needed
  • When importing the Donor Category 1 or Category 2 values in the Database, Import, Donors menu option, previously the values had to match an existing value that you had entered via the Maintenance, Donor Category 1 or Donor Category 2 menu options respectively, case-sensitive. (So if you had a category value "Member" in the program, and tried to import the value "MEMBER", it would fail, with an error message.) Now that look-up is case-insensitive, so that example would import successfully. In addition, the values to be imported no longer have to already be there - they will be added if necessary
  • The importing of data from Membership Plus now imports all years of donations in the Membership Plus database, not just the latest two years of data as it previously did
  • Fixed problems in the versions of the template mail-merge receipts distributed with version 3.64 of DONATION, for Canada (English), both regular and for gifts in kind, and in the one for Quebec (bilingual), the gift in kind version only. The problem was that if you edited and saved them, and then did merges with them, some problems would occur, including ending up with "FIELD ENDIF IS MISSING" printed on the receipts
  • Fixed a small bug where the Help buttons in two windows related to emailing receipts and statements went to the Introduction help page instead of the correct page
  • In the window for reviewing data before either a mass mailing or import of various types of data, changed the OK button to read Merge or Import as appropriate, for clarity. Also, in that same window, clicking the "X" at the top right of the window or pressing Alt-F4 to close it, rather than clicking Merge or Import, now cancels it just like clicking the Cancel button. (Previously they did the same thing as the former OK button!)

New in DONATION 3.65 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Both Importing Donors and Importing Donations now allow for importing CSV (comma-separated value) files, in addition to the previously allowed Excel and tab-separated text files
  • In both the Letters, One Letter and Letters, Mass Mailing menu options, when you use the Browse button it now has an option to load Microsoft Word's new .docx file format as well as the older .doc file format
  • The installation program for the Network Client version now has clearer instructions, and clear error messages for problems, on the screen for specifying the computer name that the Network Server version is running on, and the path to the database file
  • Occasionally the program fails to start because a user has moved either the program's data directory or the "Cooperstock Software" directory above it. Now the program will give a clearer error message about this problem, with a suggestion of how to fix it. In some cases it may even be able to try to fix it for you
  • When sending emails from letters, receipts or statements, the plain-text body of the email used to be limited to 1,000 characters. It can now hold up to 10,000 characters. (That is probably much more than anyone would want to use, given that it is plain text - if you want something longer, and more nicely formatted than you can do with this plain text part, put it into the body of your letter or receipt!)

New in DONATION 3.64 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • All Canadian receipts (English, French only and bilingual) now handle corrected or duplicate/replacement receipts the way the Canada Revenue Agency prefers, namely by creating a new receipt with a new number, that says it is replacing the old one, and marking the old one as "Cancelled". If you use mail-merge receipts, this is partly done in expanded text for the «ReceiptType» mail-merge field. In the sample Canadian mail-merge receipts supplied with the program, that field has been moved to a location where there is more room for the longer text that is now in it. Existing users, whose mail-merge receipts will not be overwritten by an update, may want to make a similar change themselves. See Replacement or Correction Receipts for Canada for details of how this change works
  • The Receipt, Reprint Range menu option now has three radio button choices for whether to leave the reprinted receipts' status as is, mark all of them as "Duplicate" (or "Replacement"), or mark all of them as "Corrected". Previously this was done with one checkbox, only allowing the reprinted receipts to have their status left as is, or to all be marked as "Corrected". Also, previously even if you did not select the checkbox to have the receipts' status changed to "Corrected", any receipt whose dollar amount had changed since it was originally saved would still be marked as "Corrected". Now that does not happen, if you choose the radio button for "Leave all receipts as is"
  • For Canadian receipts, the Receipt, Delete Range menu option now has some different behaviour when deleting replacement or correction receipts - see that Help topic for details. In brief, deleting a replacement or correction receipt number without deleting the original receipt number more or less removes the fact that you have made the correction or replacement, but leaves the original receipt there
  • All Canadian receipts now show the "Date of donation" in the main section for receipts that only include one donation, and "Year of donations" for receipts that include multiple donations. (The Canada Revenue Agency only absolutely requires the year of donation, which was already implicitly there in the phrase "Official 2014 receipt for income tax purposes" etc., but we get a lot of requests to add the date.) If you use mail-merge receipts, you will have to add this yourself, because existing mail-merge templates are never overwritten by program updates. You can add in the new mail merge fields yourself in the mail-merge editor for the receipts: «DonationDateOrYrPrompt» (for the text "Date of donation" or "Year of donations", or French or bilingual versions) and «DonationDateOrYr» (for the actual date or year value)
  • The «ReceiptType» mail-merge field now displays nothing for original receipts. It used to display "ORIGINAL RECEIPT". This now matches the way the built-in receipts always worked - they never displayed that text for original receipts
  • Removed the three variant mail merge receipt templates for Canadian receipts from new installs of the program, named receipts_merge_canada_simple.htm, receipts_merge_french_simple.htm, and receipts_merge_bilingual_simple.htm. They were for use with receipts where there is no "advantage". Now the standard receipt templates installed with the program automatically accommodate for that situation, by only displaying a row for the eligible amount of the donation
  • Changed Reports, Receipt, All Receipts a bit
  • In Reports, Custom Report, the Type field in the Receipt column now shows short versions of what would be in the new «ReceiptType» mail-merge field as described above
  • Also in Reports, Custom Report, the Receipt # field in the Donation and Receipt columns now includes the year number, the same way it is displayed everywhere else. Previously it displayed the receipt number without the year number
  • Renamed the Receipt menu option Duplicate/Corrected Receipt by Number to the simpler Duplicate/Corrected by Number
  • Separated out a full Help page for Reprinting Receipts, which had previously been part of the very long page Generating Charitable Receipts
  • When you use the Letters à One Letter or Letters, Mass Mailing menu options to reprint receipts using mail merge, it now warns you, and doesn't allow you to generate the letters/receipts, if any of the included receipts are "incorrect". (That happens if you have deleted one or more of the donations that were originally included in the receipts, for instance because they were NSF or needed a correction.) You can find such incorrect receipts with the Reports, Receipt, Incorrect Receipts report, and correct them properly with the menu options for creating duplicate/corrected receipts
  • Fixed an undesirable behaviour in mailing label reports and envelope printing reports, where if the donor's Address Line 2 is filled in, and their Address Line 3 is empty, and there is something in the Postal Code field, the Postal Code prints on its own line instead of where it should go, after the Address Line 2. (In both Canada and the U.S.A., the postal or zip codes are supposed to follow the city or town and province and state on the same line.)
  • Eliminated a problem that one user had after updating from a significantly older version, where it stopped a database schema upgrade (and thus would not start the program) because it said it couldn't drop the view DONORS_LAST_2YEARS
  • Fixed a bug, introduced by version 3.63b, where Reports, Donation, Receipted wouldn't work - it gave a techie message about an ambiguous column name. (Fortunately, the problem would only occur for users who hadn't used any previous version, or if you created a new database with Database, Switch Databases after upgrading to 3.63b.)

New in DONATION 3.63b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • When converting data from Membership Plus, donations with entirely empty amount fields previously caused the conversion to stop with an error. Now they are ignored

New in DONATION 3.63 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Changed the installation programs to give a message on their startup screens, saying that you may need to temporarily stop your anti-virus or security programs if you get a messages about "Sharing Violation" during the install, which a few users were having
  • Fixed a bug in the Database, Merge Duplicate Donors window where if the two donors don't occur in all of the same years, the program isn't detecting it, and thus isn't giving the intended option to only do the merge in the current year. In that case, the merge can fail. Also, if the program detects that and you agree for it to only do the merge for the current year, it gives a new message explaining that you can try to do the merge in other years by first moving to them with Maintenance, Change Year
  • In the Maintenance, Change Year window, if you created the next year before that year had arrived, then switched away from it, and then switched back to it, the program would incorrectly ask you again about whether you really wanted to create the new year. (It didn't recreate it a 2nd time, it just unnecessarily asked that question again.) That has been fixed
  • When validating email addresses, up to 8 characters are now allowed in the last period-separated part of an email address, e.g. as in [email protected]. Previously a maximum of 6 characters were allowed in that part
  • When converting from GiftWorks, the program is now able to determine more of the organization's information that goes into the Maintenance, Organization Info window
  • If you are using the Network Client version of DONATION, and try to run the conversions from GiftWorks, Membership Plus or Church Assistant, you now get a message explaining that you can only run those conversions from the computer running the Network Server version of DONATION. (Those conversions never worked before from the Network Client version either, but they didn't give a helpful error message explaining that fact.)

New in DONATION 3.62 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • When you are importing donors with the Database, Import, Donors menu option, if your Excel file contains any cells with newline characters (line breaks) in them, which would prevent the import from working, you now receive a detailed error message explaining that
  • Removed the menu option Help, Support Forums on the Web because we are discontinuing the use of that forum, because it really wasn't used much, and it is better to contact us directly for support
  • Fixed a problem introduced by version 3.61: If you included the "Member #" or "Envelope #" field in a Custom Report, it was adding a total (sum) of those envelope numbers at the bottom of the report! Unfortunately, this fix is only able to work if you do not change the heading for that field from "Member #" or "Envelope #" when you are in the SQL Select window
  • Fixed a problem when converting from Membership Plus version 8 or higher: if the database files were in a directory whose name included a single quote / apostrophe, they could not be imported
  • Fixed a problem where if you changed the DatabaseDirectory setting in the DONATION.INI file (not recommended, except for using the database on a USB memory key), and the directory you changed it to included a single quote / apostrophe, the database could not be opened.

New in DONATION 3.61b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • For converting from GiftWorks, made the following changes:
  • You can now do so from a GiftWorks backup file (filename.GBF) as well as the previous option of converting from an actual GiftWorks database file (filename.GDS)
  • Fixed a slight error: for payment (donation) types other than cheques with cheque numbers, it was putting the wrong payment type into the Cheque # / Paid By field
  • Fixed a problem where if the database filename included a single quote / apostrophe, it could not be imported
  • Fixed a problem where bad donation dates in GiftWorks (whether far in the future or far in the past) caused problems either during or after the conversion. It will now not convert any donation data more than 20 years in the past, or in any future calendar year

New in DONATION 3.61 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • When you are finding donors by just typing the start of a last name or an entire member/envelope number, with the focus in the Donor List, you can now press ESC to eliminate what you have typed and start over
  • Replaced the Maintenance, Change Year, Previous Year and Next Year sub-menu options with just a main Maintenance, Change Year menu option, which brings up a window showing all of the years you can change to. This allows you to move by more than one year at a time (assuming you have multiple years of data in the database), which previously required multiple steps
  • In the Reports, Custom Reports window, added a "# Donors" field to the list of Donor fields, and a "# Donations" field to the list of Donation fields, that respectively give the numbers of donors and donations included in each line of the report. This allows you to create custom summary reports that give counts as well as totals of amounts
  • For users with multiple databases, created with the Database, Switch Databases menu option, there is now a way to add command-line options in the Desktop icon for starting DONATION to start it on a specific database, and to have multiple icons for starting on different databases
  • For users of the Network Versions of DONATION, enhanced the window displayed by the Tools, Network Client Information menu option in the Network Server version, to add buttons for Print, Open in Word, and Help
  • For users of the Network Versions of DONATION, who create multiple databases with the Database, Switch Databases menu option, you now no longer have to copy the databases.txt file from the Network Server version's computer to each Network Client version's computer after each change or addition of a database, in order for the Network Client versions to have access to all of the databases
  • Added a new help topic on Using Mass Email Services, like Constant Contact etc.

New in DONATION 3.60 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • In both Reports, Donor, Addresses and Reports, Donor, Addresses by Member/Envelope Number, it is now possible to filter the donors that are included in this report by any of the two donor category fields, or the six Other Info fields. Those additional fields are not displayed on the reports, however
  • Reports created with the Reports, Custom Report menu option, or with the Database, SQL Select menu option, now do a better job of making the columns only as wide as they need to be to hold the longest retrieved data, and leaving spaces between columns. This fixes problems both where some data could be cut off because columns were too narrow, and reports were unnecessarily wide because columns were too wide. The same fix applies to the optional preview view of data (to allow filtering) from the Letters, Mass Mailing menu option
  • Changed Reports, Bank Deposit, One Deposit Details to include the section showing the transaction for your accounting program, which was previously only shown in the version of this report accessed from the Print button in the Maintenance, Create Bank Deposit window. Also, there is now more room for long accounting program account names in the bottom section of that report, except in the case where you are using QuickBooks with classes (because that requires an extra field that needs its own space)
  • Added a new table, USER_LOG, to the database, which tracks each user of the program (based on the Windows user name the logged onto their computer with). It records the time they logged on (started) and logged off (exited) the program. You can retrieve data from it with queries in the Database, SQL Select window such as "SELECT * from USER_LOG where ACTION_DATE between '2014-01-1' and '2014-01-31 23:59:59'", to see all of the activity in January 2014
  • Fixed a support problem, where if the program cannot find one of its 3rd party components (ChilkatHttp, ChilkatMail, or wodCrypt), a re-install of the full version did not always fix them, and further steps were required to fix the problem
  • Fixed a problem where two menu options on the File menu had the same underlined letter
  • The Help button in the windows accessed from the Sort and Filter buttons in reports did not always work on versions of Windows later than Windows XP. Now they do
  • This version was created with a newer version of PowerBuilder, the program used to create DONATION. (Although this does not change virtually any features, it is a major-enough behind the scenes change to merit a jump in the version numbering from 3.57 to 3.60.)

New in DONATION 3.57c (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug in the Bank Deposit details report (the one from the Print button in the Maintenance, Create Bank Deposit window), where the final sub-report (of transactions for your accounting program) was cut off, until it had been printed once

New in DONATION 3.57b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug in Reports, Donation, Summary by Dollar Ranges, introduced by version 3.57, where there were repeated rows for the various groupings appearing in the report
  • A number of reports would previously crash if they prompted for a donation category (possibly in addition to a range of dates), and the category you selected had double quotes in it. You got an incorrect and uninformative error message saying that it was an intermittent bug that only occurred in 64-bit versions of DONATION, and suggesting that you try rebooting your computer (which in these cases would not in fact help!). That problem in all such reports in now fixed

New in DONATION 3.57 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • There are now three more renamable Other Info fields for the donor, in addition to the existing three. If you wish to use them, you need to turn on their display (and give them the names you want to use for them) in the Donor tab of the Maintenance, Main Window Options window
  • In Reports, Donation, Summary by Dollar Ranges, you can now select an optional donation category to restrict the report to, or leave it as being for all donation categories (the way it was before). It is also now possible to filter the donors that are included in this report by any of the following: the Member/Envelope # (for instance, to include only those with such a number), the two donor category fields, or the six Other Info fields
  • In the Network versions, fixed a problem where if the program loses its connection to the database for some reason, it could get a large pile of error messages, one on top of another, if the user wasn't at their computer at the time, and then be hard to close. Also, it now gives an option to reconnect to the database
  • When validating email addresses for donors, the single quote character is now allowed in the first part of the email address (i.e. before the @ sign), as in o'[email protected]
  • In Reports, Bank Deposit, Summary List, added a total of the dollar amounts of all of the listed bank deposits
  • In Letters, Mass Mailing, if you chose the Pledge information option, and checked the option to export the data to a file instead of mail merging, and you were using Multi-Year Pledging, the export failed with a technical SQL error. That is now fixed
  • In the Database, Import, Donors window, sometimes Excel files when exported to text have too many columns in them, for unclear reasons. When this is the case, you are now given an option to just ignore the additional columns. This also allows for ignoring extra columns that you don't choose to import, that are after the columns you do wish to import. (This change was actually made in an earlier version, but we forgot to note it in the revision history at the time.)
  • If you had your Receipt Style in Maintenance, Receipt Options set to either Quebec (French only) or Quebec (bilingual French and English), generated a Gift in Kind receipt, and then tried to use the Email/Print button to email it, you got an error message about not finding the object "name", and the email failed. That is now fixed

New in DONATION 3.56d (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a problem in the installation programs that caused exporting to formatted Excel in the Save As window when viewing reports to give an error message and fail

New in DONATION 3.56c (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Some users are still having problems with the Tools, Check for Updates menu option not working, with incorrect error messages about not being connected to the Internet, when they are indeed connected. This version doesn't fix that, but it logs a detailed message about what the problem is, which we can then use for further diagnosis.

New in DONATION 3.56b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug introduced by version 3.56, where if you tell it to import an Excel file with the Database, Import, Donors menu option, after it converts it to a text file, it says it cannot open that text file and the import is cancelled
  • If an import file (Excel or tab-separated text) used in the Database, Import, Donors menu option has more columns on its first line than indicated in your field selections, you are now given an option to continue anyways, just ignoring the extra columns. (Previously that would always cancel the import attempt.) However, if any other line has a different number of columns, the import will still be cancelled

New in DONATION 3.56 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • When you used the Tools, Check for Updates menu option, if for some reason the download of the upgrade file failed, the "Please Wait" window for the download would remain up after an error message, leading you to think that the download was hanging, and with no obvious way to get out of it. Now that window closes after such an error
  • Fixed a bug in the Maintenance, Create Bank Deposit window, where if there are no entries in the Maintenance, Donation Paid By Values window with the "Include in Bank Deposit" checkbox unchecked, you get a techie SQL error message when you click the Retrieve Deposits button, and you cannot proceed. (This is actually a very unlikely situation, because virtually everyone will have Paid By values that do not get deposited as part of your bank deposits, like Gift in Kind, credit cards, etc.)
  • When you use the Database, Import, Donors menu option, sometimes you can get erroneous error messages about having only 1 tab-separated column on a line of the file, when the program sees an empty line that isn't really there! Now empty lines of the file are skipped

New in DONATION 3.55c (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a minor problem, possibly introduced by version 3.55, where the progress bar in the window showing an Internet Backup uploading never changed

New in DONATION 3.55b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a problem introduced by version 3.55, where you could not restore Internet backups, because you got a message about it being unauthorized, and the password possibly being incorrect

New in DONATION 3.55 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • When you used the Tools, Check for Updates menu option, many users were finding that it failed, with an incorrect message saying that they did not seem to be connected to the Internet. That is fixed by this version, however, to get this version successfully, you have to download it from the DOWNLOAD page on the website, at www.software4nonprofits.com/download.htm, since Check for Updates isn't working in your current version!

New in DONATION 3.54 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Added the ability to convert and import the data from a GiftWorks program database, with the Database, Import, From Giftworks menu option.

New in DONATION 3.53 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • For all receipts for Canada, changed to a newer version of the Canada Revenue Agency's required web address that is printed on the receipts. If you are using the mail-merge version of the receipts, however, unless you do a new install on a new computer, the receipt template files will not be updated, because that could overwrite any changes to them that you have made. So you will have to make those changes yourself: to www.cra.gc.ca/charitiesandgiving for English receipts, and to www.arc.gc.ca/bienfaisanceetdons for receipts for Quebec (French-only, or bilingual). You can do that with the Edit Mail Merge Receipt button in the Maintenance à Receipt Options window. If you do separate Gift in Kind mail-merge receipts, you will also have to use the Edit Mail Merge Gift in Kind Receipt button in that window.
  • Prevented installation of the program in a path whose name contains a single quote character, because for some reason that prevents the program from starting properly.

New in DONATION 3.52 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • In the Database, Import, Donors window, removed the requirement that fields including the First Name and Last Name be imported, as long as you are importing the Business Name. (Some import files might be entirely composed of businesses or organizations, with no first/last names for contact people.)
  • Improved a message box that you get once a month, if the support period implied by your license key is expired by at least one month, to further clarify that the problem could be either that you haven't updated your license key since the last payment, or that you haven't paid for over a year

New in DONATION 3.51 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • For Current Donation Information or Individual Donation Information mail-merge letters, added a YTDTOTALAMOUNT mail-merge field, for the total donations from that donor for the year so far.
  • Added a section at the end of the Help page for Importing Data from Viansoft Church Contribution System about resolving problems importing the donations if the Short Date Format set in your Windows Control Panel's Region and Language tool is not something like MM/DD/YYYY.
  • Fixed a bug in the window for installing a new license key that in some cases would accept an out-of-date key and indicate it was valid.

New in DONATION 3.50c (Jun 19, 2015)

  • There is an undocumented right-click menu on the Donor List area of the main window, with options for New Donor, Edit Donor, Delete Donor, and Find Donor. An error has been corrected where all of those were still visible (though they didn't all work) for users signed in with a Limited User Password. Now the Edit Donor and Delete Donor menu options are never visible for those users, and New Donor is only visible for limited users who have the right to create new donors (as set in the Limited Users tab of the Maintenance à Main Window Options window)

New in DONATION 3.50b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Switched to using a new version of the program that creates the installation programs, which introduces some new capabilities, but also drops support for installing DONATION on the 13-year-old version of Windows called Windows 2000.
  • The conversion to Membership Plus now handles a newly-discovered type of possible data error in its files, where a donation is not associated with a donor.
  • Fixed a bug when installing the Network Client version of the program, where if the Database Directory on the Network Server version's computer has been changed from its standard location, you may get a message about that directory not existing on the Network Client computer, and be unable to complete the install. (The database directory doesn't have to exist on the Network Client computer!)

New in DONATION 3.50 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Changed the installation program, so that a tile for DONATION shows up on the Windows 8 "All Apps" area, and DONATION can be searched for with the Windows 8 feature for searching for applications. For earlier versions of Windows, DONATION now also shows up under Start Menu in Programs, Software4Nonprofits, as well as the Windows Desktop (where it always showed up).
  • Made it possible to control the font size of tables in mail-merge receipts and letters, such as «DetailsTable:...», «SummaryTable» etc., by adding some style information to the mail-merge templates (ask for support for details on how to do this, if it is an issue for you). Also pre-set all of those tables to a font size of 12pt in all built-in template files. (However, the built-in template files installed by the program are only installed the first time you do an installation on a given computer, or if those files are missing - they will not overwrite existing installed template files.)

New in DONATION 3.49b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a crash in the program after making database backups in the Standalone version, when you are logged in with the Limited User Password.

New in DONATION 3.49 (May 16, 2013)

  • Fixed a bug when making database backups in the Network Client version only (introduced, I think, in version 3.45d) where you first get an incorrect error message about the database file not existing, and then in the window for specifying the path to backup to, the backup path is shown with no filename component, and you thus have to type that in yourself.
  • When converting data from Membership Plus, a check was added to ignore completely empty Fund rows (which get converted to donation categories in DONATION). Previously they would have caused the conversion to halt. There could also be problems where there were donations in the Membership Plus database with no matching donor, again causing the conversion to halt. That was resolved by adding in a fake donor with a Business Name like "Missing Donor 123", to attach those donations to. (One fake donor is added for each internal donor number in Membership Plus that there were donations for, with no matching donor.)
  • Fixed a weird problem in reports such as Reports. Details and Summary, which have a details section followed by a summary section. In that report, if it was more than one page long, and you used either the Filter or the Sort button, the summary section disappeared from the view on your screen. However, if you printed it, it was fine, and after printing, the summary section reappeared on your screen.

New in DONATION 3.48 (May 16, 2013)

  • Added new options for users with a Receipt Style of "U.S.A." in the Maintenance Receipt Options window, for whether donors receive "intangible religious benefits" for their donations, which then affects the wording on the receipts.
  • For mail-merge receipts for users with a Receipt Style of "U.S.A." in the Maintenance Receipt Options window, there is a new mail-merge field available, ReligiousBenefits, which can be used to determine whether to include some variant wording in the receipts.
  • In the Reprint Range window, added a checkbox that can be used for marking all of the reprinted receipts as "Corrected", when that is appropriate.

New in DONATION 3.47 (May 16, 2013)

  • When converting data from Membership Plus, a check was added for there being donors ("members" in Membership Plus) with the same internal unique ID, which would prevent them from being imported into DONATION. As long as those duplicate donors have no contributions, the import will continue, just skipping the 2nd one.
  • When you pop up a calendar control for a date field, previously the only way to get rid of it without making a selection was by pressing ESC. Now you can get rid of it by clicking the same popup button again, or clicking back in the date field, or in most other places on the same window.
  • Made Reports 'Donor' Old Donors much faster (previously it could take multiple minutes if you had quite a lot of data).
  • Fixed a problem during a re-installation, if you have configured your database to be located on a USB memory key, and the key containing your database has not been inserted into your computer. Now it will prompt you to do that before continuing the installation.

New in DONATION 3.46e (May 16, 2013)

  • Made some changes to the program's License Agreement, and various places in both this Help file and the program's website, to clarify the following existing policies: Older versions of the program are never made available, so users whose paid support and upgrades eligibility period has expired need to pay an appropriate fee to download and re-install the current version of the program, unless they keep their own secure permanent copy of the installation program from before their upgrades eligibility period ended, which they can use instead. Also, renamed the "Full License" fee to the "Initial Purchase" fee, for clarity.
  • If you try to delete an existing donation on the program's main window by either changing the Amount to $0, or deleting the Amount, you are now given a message explaining how to delete donations, by using the Delete button.

New in DONATION 3.46d (May 16, 2013)

  • When converting data from Membership Plus, if negative dollar amounts are found in donations, they are now not imported because they are not allowed in DONATION. However a note about that specific skipped donation is put into the file of messages about the conversion that is shown to the user. Previously negative dollar amounts would cause the conversion to crash.
  • Fixed something in the Database 'Import' All Data menu option that would prevent it from working correctly - generally a "Foreign Key Validation" error would come up.