OccamBring in the gifts from your old system so each donor's history, your totals, your reports and their year-end statements include giving from before you moved to Occam. For the import steps themselves, see Importing: how it works.
Before you start
- Import your donors first. A gift whose donor isn't in Occam yet creates that donor, but with only the name and email from your gift file.
- If you track funds or designations, set those up first, by importing Funds / Designations or with Add fund on the Accounting card in Settings. Gifts are matched to funds by name.
- If your organization uses the QuickBooks Online connection, read "If you use QuickBooks", at the end of this article, before you import.
The columns
In the sidebar, go to Import Data and select Donations / Giving history.
| Occam field | Required | Column headings it recognizes |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | Email, Email Address, E-mail, EmailAddress, Primary Email | |
| First name, Last name | No | The same as for donors. Used only when Occam has to create the donor. |
| Amount | Yes | Amount, Gift Amount, Donation Amount, Total, Amount Paid, Gift |
| Gift date | Yes | Date, Gift Date, Donation Date, Transaction Date, Received, Received Date |
| Fund / designation | No | Fund, Fund Name, Designation, Restriction Fund |
| Note / memo | No | Note, Notes, Memo, Comment |
| Payment method | No | Payment Method, Method, Payment Type, Tender, Source |
- Amount can include dollar signs and commas, such as
$1,234.56. It must be more than zero, so refunds and negative amounts fail. - Gift date is read month first, US style:
3/15/2024,3-15-2024and2024-03-15all work. A day-first date like15/03/2024fails, and05/03/2024is read as May 3. - Fund / designation must match the name of a fund in Occam, ignoring capitals. If it doesn't, the gift imports with no fund and no error.
- Every gift needs an email address. A gift without one can't be imported.
On Review, Occam may say some rows are "duplicate emails in file (skipped)". For giving history you can ignore that: a donor's gifts all import, one per row.
Where imported gifts go
All imported gifts go into a campaign called Imported Gifts, which Occam creates the first time you import. It's archived, so it never appears on your public page, but you'll see it in your Campaigns list. Each gift appears on its donor's profile.
Each gift is recorded on its gift date, so it counts in Total Raised, your reports, the 990 report and year-end statements as of the day it was made. Importing doesn't send receipts or run automations.
The Imported Gifts campaign can't be deleted while it has gifts in it, so your imported history is safe.
Importing again
Occam skips a gift when its donor already has a gift for the same amount on the same date. So if you import the same file twice, the gifts from the first time are skipped. That rule also means:
- If one donor has two gifts of the same amount on the same day in your file, only the first is imported. Record the other by hand. See Record a check, cash or other offline gift.
- A gift whose amount, date or email address has changed since you first imported it is imported again, as a second gift.
- Imported gifts are never compared with gifts made online through Occam.
There's no way to delete a gift yourself, so import each file once. If an import goes wrong, email info@occam.gives.
Good to know
- Imported gifts are recorded as unrestricted, even when you match them to a restricted fund, and the 990 report counts them that way.
- A few places treat an imported gift as a day earlier than its date. On a donor's profile it shows the day before the date in your file. In Monthly Revenue, a gift dated the 1st counts in the month before. On year-end statements, a gift dated January 1 is on the previous year's statement.
If you use QuickBooks
If you use the QuickBooks Online connection, don't select Sync unsynced donations on the QuickBooks Online card in Settings after an import. It sends every gift that hasn't been sent yet to QuickBooks, imported gifts included, which can put gifts that are already in your books there a second time. Email info@occam.gives first.