Tips for Using Breeze Online Giving for Admins

In this article, we set out to streamline the must-know information for you as a staff member handling Online Giving through Breeze. We are assuming that you are already using Breeze for online giving and are looking for some additional information while helping to serve your donors well!

If your organization is not using Breeze for Online giving and you are interested in doing so, read our setup section to get started!

Click on the topics below to display specific details about the different areas of Online Giving:

How to Associate Donations with a Donor Record in Breeze (and why you should do this)

When an online donation comes in, Breeze automatically tries to associate the gift with a profile. If Breeze is unable to do so, it will ask you to make this association. Associating Donations with a Donor is an important step in ensuring that the gift is recorded properly. Failure to associate contributions with profiles can cause issues with giving statements, refunds, and first-time giver notifications. 

To learn how to associate gifts click on the options below

To Associate a Payment with a Profile in Breeze To Associate a Payment with a person not in Breeze
  1. Navigate to "Giving" > "Online Giving."
    Note: If you are viewing the dashboard on a smaller screen you may need to select More then Giving.
  2. Click on the "Associations" tab.
  3. Type the name of the person in the Assign To box and select the individual from the drop-down list.

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What are the Online Giving Fees and Donor Covered Fees Information
It is important to understand the processing fees associated with online giving. At Breeze we love simple pricing and so there are no additional monthly fees for using online giving; rather you simply pay transaction fees (a small percentage of each donation) listed here

Click on the fees below to see the specific rates for each type of gift: 

ACH Processing Fees Credit/Debit Card Processing Fees Donor Covered Fees

Online Giving fees are 1% + $0.25/transaction for ACH (bank transfer) payments.

ACH gifts take 7 business days to process and clear before funds are made available for transferring to your bank account.
These rates only apply to U.S. Online Giving.  For giving information outside of the U.S. view Using Breeze Outside of the US

 

Editing a recurring gift or helping a donor manage a recurring gift
It is important to understand the process for editing a recurring gift in Breeze, or helping the donor mange their own recurring giving within Breeze. 

Click on the options below to see the specific instructions for modifying a recurring gift: 

How to Edit a Recurring Gift as an Admin How to Instruct a giver to edit a recurring gift
To modify a recurring donation from the admin side on behalf of a giver:
  1. Navigate to "Giving" > "Online Giving."
  2. Towards the bottom of the page, you'll see the "Recurring" tab. Click on this tab. 
  3. Find the recurring payment you would like to modify and click the amount.
  4. In the Recurring Payment window click "Change" to the right of the section, you'd like to modify
    • Payment Method Section, use this to Update or change the Payment Method of the recurring gift. 
    • Schedule Sectionuse this to adjust the date, amount, frequency, and fund of the recurring gift. 
    • Donor Section: Reassign the association of this recurring giver to a new person.  
When a donor first sets up a recurring donation, they can choose the start date, up to one month in advance.  When modifying the recurring donation either from the admin side or from the donor's side, you are able to push the next donation out up to 6 months out in the future.
Future-dated recurring donations are accessible in the Online Giving > Recurring Gifts section of Breeze. If you happen to remove a fund in the Funds section that a recurring donation is set for, the recurring gift will readjust to go to the new fund you selected to move the contributions to when you deleted the fund. See article on Funds for more information.
What you need to know about a failed gift. 
When a recurring gift fails to process both the donor and the primary user receive an email letting them know the payment failed to process. Gifts can fail for numerous reasons, including insufficient funds, spending limit met on that day, or new account information. For specific details on why a gift failed, the donor will need to contact their banking institution for more details, as the bank is who failed the gift from processing.

Select the gift type below
to see specific details around that type of failed gift: 
ACH Payment Fails to Process Credit and Debit Card Fail to Process

If the first attempt fails, then the church is charged a $1 "returned check fee" and the recurring gift is cancelled. An attempt will not be made again to process this payment; the recurring payment will need to be set up again. The donor and the primary user both receive an email when an ACH gift fails to process.

Understanding how to refund a payment in Breeze
There are times that you may need to issue a refund for a form payment received for an upcoming event, or refund a member who accidentally gave more than they intended to.  You can easily refund payments from within Breeze. Please understand that,
  • Refunds can take 5-10 business days to completely process and appear back in the giver's bank account/credit card. 
  • Our best recommendation for refunding an ACH payment is to wait until the ACH transfer clears before you issue a refund.
Click on the options below to see the steps for refunding giving from these different sections: 

Refund from Online Giving Refund from Giving Reports Refund from a Profile
  1. Navigate to "Giving" > "Online Giving."
  2. Find the payment you would like to refund in the "Payments" tab. 
  3. Click the dollar amount of the gift you'd like to refund.
  4. Click (Refund) beside the dollar amount on the Payment Details popup. 
  5. Select if the refund is a full or partial refund, and click Refund.

If you have not associated payments with a profile yet this will be the best place to find the payment and refund it.  

For more information on refunds please visit Refunding Online Giving in our help center!

Reconciling Online Giving
Reconciling Online Giving is crucially important to ensure that you are properly accounting for the income coming in through online giving and the processing fees in your general ledger. From the Online Giving page, click the "Transfers" tab in the bottom of the screen.  From there you'll be able to filter and see a breakdown of each transfer, the overall Gross, Fees, and Net amounts.  Then click on any of the descriptions to see a further breakdown of each transfer and view the details of the fees for each fund.  To see more information on this, visit Reconciling Online Giving