Focus On: Thank you Letters
Welcome to our Focus On series. In this series of e-mail tutorials, we will show you a few overlooked features in our system. We encourage you to print this document to follow along through the lesson.
Tutorial: Thank You Letters
In this tutorial, you will learn:
Lesson 1: How the system determines who needs to be thanked
Lesson 2: How to use Standard Reports to find records to thank
Lesson 3: Regenerating Thank Yous
Lesson 4: How to use Custom Reports to find specific records to thank
Lesson 5: Special Circumstances: No one has been marked as thanked but we’ve thanked them!
Important: If you are planning to use the letter template feature in BackOffice to write your thank you letters but you don’t know how to set-up a letter template, check out the tutorial on letter templates here.
Lesson 1: How the system determines who needs to be thanked
When you add a contribution to a record, you will notice there is Thanked checkbox and Date area.
This area is specifically for tracking who has been thanked in your database and who has not. When you enter in a contribution, chances are they have not been thanked yet. If you keep this box unchecked, the system will recognize this as someone who needs to be thanked.
Don’t worry! You will not have to come through and mark each record by hand once you have thanked them. You will learn in a later lesson how to do this when you generate letters or exports.
Lesson 2: How to use Standard Reports to find records to thank
The easiest way to find records to thank is to use Standard Reports.
Go to Reports and select Standard Reports.
Select Type: General.
Select Format: Thank Yous.
Click Generate.
In a new window, the Thank You Manager will appear.
The Thank You Manager will list the number of records that are currently marked as unthanked. Your Thank You Options list the different ways you can proceed.
Print Labels &endash; Will generate a Crystal Report Avery 5160 Address Labels to print.
Print Envelopes &endash; Will generate a Crystal Report of envelopes to print.
Create Custom Export &endash; Will allow you to export the information into a .csv file (for more information on how to create your own Custom Exports check out the tutorial).
Create Mail Merged Letters &endash; Will take you through the process of creating a mail merge with an existing letter templates (for more information on letter templates, check out the tutorial).
Select any of the Thank You Options to create your reports.
Once you have finished, you will want to make sure the thanked box and today’s date are completed in the transaction area so those records do not come up when you run your Thank You Letters in the future. Click the Mark as Thanked button to accomplish this.
Lesson 3: Regenerate Thank Yous
It will happen sooner or later, you clicked the Mark as Thanked button too soon or a batch of thank you letters had a mishap and you need to run through the process again but how to find those records once you’ve marked them as thanked?
Go to Reports and select Standard Reports.
Select Type: General.
Select Format: Regenerate Thank You Letters
Click Generate.
In a new window, Regenerate Thank Yous will appear.
The list will include any past batches that you have thanked. Find the day that correspond to the thank yous for and click Regenerate.
In a new window, the Thank you Manager will appear. Repeat steps 5 & 6 from Lesson 2.
Click Close when you have completed your steps.
Lesson 4: How to use Custom Reports to find specific records to thank
If your campaign has a certain contributors it wishes to thank separately, you can do so using the custom report generator. However, you will want to do this BEFORE you do use the Standard Reports for everyone else.
For example, if you have a letter that specifically goes to contributors who have given $1000 or more, you can run a custom report to thank those people:
Go to Reports à Custom Reports
In the Query Builder put the following information:
Join And
Table All Contributions
Field Amount
Relationship Is Equal to or Greater than
Value 1000
Click Add to Query. You will see the query empty out of the Query Builder and populate in the Query Details.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen. Under Export Options, select Type: General and Format: Thank Yous. This will limit your results to only those who need to be thanked.
Click Submit Query.
In a new window, the Thank You Manager will appear. Follow steps 5 -7 in Lesson 2.
Once you have thanked your special donors, you can thank the remaining contributors through the Standard Reports thank you manager by following Lesson 2.
Lesson 5: Special Circumstances: No one has been marked as thanked but we’ve thanked them!
If you’ve come from another database system or if you had financial data imported when you joined CompleteCampaigns.com, you may fall into this special circumstance. You have financial contributions from a previous election (which were all thanked two years ago when the election occurred) but now they are showing as unthanked in the current system.
Or if you have been entering in and thanking contributors for months now and did not realize this was an option in CompleteCampaigns.com, you may also have many records that have been thanked but have not been marked as thanked.
First, you will need to figure out a cut-off date to use for everyone that has not been thanked but should be thanked. This date should be BEFORE the date of any current transactions that you want to thank. For instance, if you had an election two years ago, you could use 12/31/2004. Or if you have been fundraising for months, when was the last date you did thank you letters? Use that date.
Go to Reports à Custom Reports
In the Query Builder put the following information:
Join And
Table All Contributions
Field Transaction Date
Relationship Is Equal to or Less than
Value (Date you wish to use)
Click Add to Query. You will see the query empty out of the Query Builder and populate in the Query Details.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen. Under Export Options, select Type: General and Format: Thank Yous. This will limit your results to only those who need to be thanked.
Click Submit Query.
In a new window, the Thank You Manager will appear. Click on Marked as Thanked. This will mark all of those outstanding contributions as thanked.
Click Close.
Now those records will not show up as needing to be thanked.
Hopefully this Focus On has given you a better idea on how to use the Thank You tools in BackOffice. Let us know if this tutorial did not answer your questions or if you have further inquiries regarding this tool. We’re here to help!
Do you have an idea for our next Focus On? Is there something you would like to know more about? Simply email us at: support@completecampaigns.com. We’d love to hear from you!