Notes from the Programmers

The Allegiance Software programmers have developed a new feature for our Fundraising system clients. This new feature will allow you to charge donors a shipping fee on their thank you gifts. These shipping charges will help you save money on shipping costs and give your donors the chance to designate more of their gift towards programming.

The shipping rates can be set up in various ways. The shipping fee can be calculated by putting a flat rate on a premium code, a flat rate on a source code (so any premium sets for that source code would get that rate), or
as a percent of the premium's qualifying amount (the percent is entered on the source code).

If a shipping fee is attached to a source code, it will override the fee attached to premiums associated with that source code, so you can have different amounts for different pledge drives or pages. For example, you might want to charge a flat rate during some drives and charge a percentage during others.

The money for the shipping costs is stored in a different file so it does not interfere with the pledge amount or raise the total amount of pledges. The money is only used to offset the premium costs; which helps you keep your books in order.

This feature is now available. To get it you must call the Allegiance support staff at 877-858-7654 and have them activate it for you. Because the shipping feature affects many areas of your database, including tables and reporting, you will want to review the Shipping Features User Guide in the Allegiance Client Center to better understand how it works. If you would like more information, please contact support.

In our third video tip covering Analysis Reports, we discuss how to obtain information about the billing you've done, and various options for customizing your results.

Learn how you can display the minimum pledge amounts for your premiums as periodic values. Using this feature will allow your donors to see how much to pledge per month for each premium package you are offering, instead of just the total annual amount.

Join the Allegiance community online. Register for our user forum to connect with other Allegiance users to get their opinions and exchange ideas.

It's your forum, so be sure to take advantage of it.

Cloud computing will soon be available for all Allegiance products. Allegiance will host your software in a hardened and secure data center, built to withstand natural disasters. The data center is extremely reliable, well-tested, and proven in its capabilities.

Eliminate the expense and risks of maintaining a local server and get automatic data backups and software updates. Call Ryan at 800-858-7654 to learn more.