Gifts

When a donor gives outside of an online checkout (a cheque in the mail, a wire, a card payment taken by phone), you record it by hand from the Transactions page. Every recorded gift becomes an immutable money record tied to a donor, and you can issue a receipt for it from the same row.

Transactions needs your account's Giving module and Donor management both switched on. Neither alone is enough: the module without the switch stays hidden, and the switch without the module does nothing. Missing either sends you back to the Mercleo home.

Recording a gift

Click Record gift in the toolbar to open a side sheet. From the standalone Transactions page the sheet opens with an actor picker at the top; opening it from a contact's Giving tab hides the picker and pre-fills that contact instead.

The sheet collects the following fields:

• Actor: every gift needs one. On the standalone page, a Type toggle switches between Contact and Organization, then a search box finds the donor. Switching the type clears any actor you had selected.
• Amount: required. Enter the dollar figure; cents are accepted (for example 10.50). The adjacent currency dropdown offers USD, CAD, EUR, and GBP and defaults to USD.
• Gift date: required, defaults to today. This is the date the gift occurred, which can differ from when you record it.
• Payment method: optional free text (the placeholder suggests Cheque, Credit card, Wire).
• Notes: optional internal notes about the gift.

Click Record gift in the sheet header to save. The amount you typed in dollars is converted to whole cents and stored as a gift transaction. On success the sheet closes and the gift appears in the table.

What the form rejects

On the standalone page, submitting without choosing a donor surfaces "Search and select a contact or organization." The amount must be a valid number greater than zero. A non-numeric or non-positive value is refused with "Amount must be a valid number greater than zero", and a blank amount returns "Amount is required". A missing date returns "Date is required".

Browsing and filtering gifts

The table shows Actor, Amount, Currency, Type, Occurred, and Receipt. When a gift is tied to a contact, the actor cell links to that contact's record; gifts tied to an organization or household show the donor as plain text. Rows are paginated 50 at a time, with Previous and Next links appearing once there is more than one page.

The type dropdown filters the table to a single transaction type. The system types are gift, pledge_payment, in_kind, matching_gift, refund, and reversal, shown in the dropdown with readable labels. Choosing All types clears the filter. These types are system-defined; you cannot add your own.

Active filters appear as removable chips in the toolbar; clicking the ✕ on a chip clears that one filter while preserving the others. Opening a donor's Giving tab links into this list pre-filtered to that donor, shown as a Contact filter chip.

Issuing a receipt from a gift

The Receipt column carries the action for each gift: an Issue receipt button when none exists yet, a View receipt link once one does. Issuing, downloading, emailing, voiding, and reissuing receipts are covered in full in Tax receipts.

If issuing is blocked, the reason appears inline next to the button instead of generating a receipt. The two most common blocks: the gift is not in CAD ("Only CAD gifts can be receipted in Phase 1."), or the donor is missing a name or address ("Donor name and address are required for a receipt."). A third block applies regardless of the gift itself: Mercleo has to verify your charity registration before any receipt can be issued. Check Charity details if issuing is blocked and neither of the two reasons above applies.

Anonymous gifts are the exception: when a gift is marked anonymous, the actor cell reads "Anonymous" and the Receipt column shows a dash, since no receipt can be issued when there is no named donor to address it to.