Contents
Do I need to send year-end receipts?
What information do I need to get started?
How do I send my letter receipts?
How do I send my email receipts?
Do I need to send year-end receipts?
We recommend sending donation acknowledgements soon after the transaction with System Emails and/or System Letters. However, many organizations choose to send an additional message at the end of the year, summarizing contributions. This is not required by the IRS if you have sent contemporaneous acknowledgments for each transaction but can be a part of good stewardship.
Note for Canadian Organizations: Please refer to this guide when you are ready to issue annual CRA receipts.
What information do I need to get started?
Before starting your year-end receipting process, make sure these steps are completed:
- Confirm that all cash and check donations, as well as any online donations collected outside of Neon CRM that need to be entered or imported, have been entered to the CRM so that your prior year's dataset is complete. You may want to wait several days after January 1 to ensure that checks sent on December 31 have arrived and been entered.
- Run a report of the prior year's contributors and make any last efforts to collect missing contact information. We recommend running an All Accounts Report with the criteria Transaction Date greater than or equal to <<January 1 of last year>> and include output columns for Full Street Address and Email1. Use this report to identify contributors without either an address or email that can be used for receipts.
- Decide on your strategy for sending receipts. A common way organizations do this is to send letter receipts to all accounts with addresses, and only email receipts if an address isn't available. But if your preference is for email, you might choose to do the opposite.
- For your letters, plan your strategy for envelope addresses - will you be printing to labels, printing onto the envelopes, or hand writing your envelopes? Have a software program able to mail merge and print onto labels or envelopes ready.
How do I send my letter receipts?
For your letter receipts, follow these steps:
1. Go to Letters > Campaign Letters & Tracking
2. Create a New Campaign Letter
3. Give your letter a name. Code, Inventory, and Description fields are optional. Save your name and then select "Add Content".
4. Next, you'll be prompted to select a template for your letter. If you've created Campaign Letters in Neon CRM previously and want to reuse a similar design, choose a template from the Saved Templates or Copy from Existing Letters lists. Otherwise, choose one of the Neon CRM Templates as a layout. You can make additional layout changes after this point. Click Continue.
5. Apply a Theme to your letter. Letter Themes are pre-configured header, footer, and background (if you are printing your letters onto blank paper) or margin settings (if you're printing onto letterhead).
If you don't have a Theme set up in your Neon CRM system, take a moment to configure your general letter settings inside the Settings tab.
If you will be printing your letter onto pre-printed letterhead, be sure to select the "Print on Letterhead" option and set your printing margins to leave space for your letterhead content.
6. If you are setting up your Theme for the first time and are printing onto blank paper, user the Header and Footer sections of your letter to add a logo or header and any general organization information that should be included in a footer.
7. After your header and footer are looking good, create the body of your letter by dragging items from the Content Blocks section onto the letter. The only required section is the Transaction Summary, but you may want to include other text content, a photo, etc.
8. Configure the Transaction Summary content block by clicking on it and then using the settings inside the left sidebar. For year-end receipts, be sure to set the tax year to "Previous Calendar Year"
If there are any specific Campaigns, Funds, or Purposes that you do not want to display in receipts, use the "Filter by Allocation" settings to specify which allocations can be included.
In the "What transaction details should display on the summary?" field, specify which fields you want to display as columns inside the summary. Keep in mind that Neon CRM offers more columns than can typically fit comfortable in a horizontal table on an 8.5"x11" paper, so you may want to pare down the list of columns. Tax-Deductible Amount, Amount, and Transaction Date are recommended.
At the bottom of the settings section, there are a series of additional settings to determine what information should be included in the summary. First, you need to make a decision about whether to summarize by household or by individual. Summarizing by household can be convenient for donors filing taxes jointly, but inconvenient for donors who may be donating with a partner but filing individually.
Typically for year-end receipts, we recommend excluding pledges, including Donor Covered Fees, including In-Kind, and including Event Registrations, Membership Transactions, and Store Purchases if your organization uses those modules in Neon CRM and if any transactions made in those modules are partially or fully tax-deductible to your constituents.
9. Now, preview your letter and make sure it's looking good! Use the "Print" option at the bottom right to open a print dialogue on your computer or even complete a test printing to make sure your margins and printer settings are aligning with the letter design.
10. Next, let's set up your mailing list! Click "Save & Close", then "Save Campaign Letter." Now, you'll be on a page titled "Campaign Letter" where you can see your letter's name and a preview.
Scroll down to the "Campaign Letter Recipients" section on this page, and select Add > Add From Report.
If you previously turned on the setting to consolidate the Transaction Summary by Household, choose the Household Report. Otherwise, you can use the Mailing Report. Or, if you have previously created and saved a year-end report, choose it from the Saved Report list.
11. To create your report, use this set of criteria:
Note: If you want to send letters only to constituents without an email address, add an additional criteria for "Email1 Blank."
This will produce a list of all constituents with an address who have a tax-deductible amount to be receipted from last year. Run your report and then select "Add All to Material/Letter Tracking." Your output column configuration does not matter for this use case, all addresses will transfer into the letter tracking list regardless.
12. Now, all of your letter recipients have been added to the list. Select them all with the checkbox and choose "Preview & Print." Please note that for large mailing lists, it will take Neon CRM a few moments to generate the full preview.
By default, the system prints 10 letters at a time. But to print more quickly, adjust the "Items per Page" setting to 100.
13. When your preview letters have been generated, click "Print" to send them to your printer.
14. Click "Download Addresses" to download an Excel or CVS file for your envelope or label merge outside of Neon CRM. And once your letters are printed, click "Mark as Complete" to mark the letters as sent inside Neon CRM.
How do I send my email receipts?
For your email receipts, follow these steps:
1. Go to Emails > Email Audiences.
2. Create a New Audience and give it a name. Description is optional and leave the audience unpublished. Click "Create Audience."
3. Inside the Audience, click Add > Live Report under the "Audience Sources" heading.
4. If you want to send consolidated receipts by household, choose New Report > Household Report. Or, if you have previously saved a year-end report, choose Saved Report. Otherwise, Email Audience Report is recommended. Set up this set of criteria for your report:
Note: If you want to send email receipts only to constituents who did not receive a letter receipt, add the criteria Address Line 1 Blank, to exclude anyone with an address.
Run the report and then click "Save Email List."
5. Now, go to Emails > Email Campaigns > New Email Campaign. Follow the steps to create your Email Name and Subject Line. Select the audience you just created for the Audience field. Email Link Authentication is recommended but optional. And make any adjustments you would like for the sender information. Click "Add Content"
6. Next, you'll be prompted to select a template for your email. If you've created Campaign Emails in Neon CRM previously and want to reuse a similar design, choose a template from the Saved Templates or Copy from Existing Emails lists. Otherwise, choose one of the Neon CRM Templates as a layout. You can make additional layout changes after this point. Click Continue.
5. Apply a Theme to your email. Email Themes are pre-configured header, footer, and style settings.
If you don't have a Theme set up in your Neon CRM system, take a moment to add content to your header and footer and configure settings in the Settings panel.
7. Next, design the body of your letter by dragging items from the Content Blocks section onto the letter. The only required section is the Transaction Summary, but you may want to include other text content, a photo, etc.
8. Configure the Transaction Summary content block by clicking on it and then using the settings inside the left sidebar. For year-end receipts, be sure to set the tax year to "Previous Calendar Year"
If there are any specific Campaigns, Funds, or Purposes that you do not want to display in receipts, use the "Filter by Allocation" settings to specify which allocations can be included.
In the "What transaction details should display on the summary?" field, specify which fields you want to display as columns inside the summary. Tax-Deductible Amount is recommended.
At the bottom of the settings section, there are a series of additional settings to determine what information should be included in the summary. First, you need to make a decision about whether to summarize by household or by individual. Summarizing by household can be convenient for donors filing taxes jointly, but inconvenient for donors who may be donating with a partner but filing individually.
Typically for year-end receipts, we recommend excluding pledges, including Donor Covered Fees, including In-Kind, and including Event Registrations, Membership Transactions, and Store Purchases if your organization uses those modules in Neon CRM and if any transactions made in those modules are partially or fully tax-deductible to your constituents.
9. Preview your email to check that you're happy with the design in both desktop and mobile views, then select "Save & Close." You may be prompted to also save your Email Theme - this can be helpful for use in future emails, but is not required. Then, click "Schedule and Send" to either send your receipts immediately or schedule them to send at a future date.
Congratulations! Your year-end receipts are finished!