Letter Box tips for year-end receipting

The holidays are just around the corner and most folks in the office is preparing for time-off and spending time with family and loved ones over the winter break. One thing I used to dread when coming back from some much-needed time off is prepping and generating all those consolidated thank you letters & receipts for year-end.

Since the removal of the Word merge functionality from Raiser’s Edge, a few tools have popped up in the Blackbaud marketplace to try and provide support for clients to better manage generating receipts and acknowledgements. One of my go-to tools is Letter Box by Red Arc.

With the free version of Letter Box, you can create gift and constituent letters directly out of NXT view. With their premium version, you have access to additional template types – one of which is the Gift Summary template. Disclaimer: this tip I am sharing today is specifically for Canadian non-profits regarding CRA guidelines - our American neighbours can generate receipts/acknowledgements without accessing DBV.

Using the Gift Summary Template, you can now generate consolidated tax receipts directly out of NXT. Here are the high-level steps:

1. Ensure that all records requiring consolidated receipts have Receipt type = Consolidated marked in Constituent Bio 2 (DBV only)

2. Ensure that all gifts are marked as “Not acknowledged” & “Not Receipted”, receipt number is blank

3. Generate receipt numbers using the Mail function in DBV (if you need to run receipts with a specific receipt stack)

4. Create a Gift Summary Template – use your general receipt template format by cloning it!

5. Create a Gift List of all consolidated gifts

6. Create a Bulk Letter, apply the Gift List to your Gift Summary template and merge

If you are a Letter Box client or is looking for a tool that can help streamline your receipting/acknowledgement process, I hope this short blog will give you a preview on how to generate consolidated receipts in NXT.