Rising Star III

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Bulk upload for one contribution with many attributions? Sample spreadsheet or recs?

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The basic need is to use bulk upload to add dozens of attributions for one contribution. It seems like it’s probably possible but the article I found on attributions leaves quite a bit to speculation and I’m hoping to avoid a lengthy trial and error process and having someone manually enter 80+ attributions. If you’ve done this and have a sample spreadsheet or some guidance, I’d love to hear from you!

Background: We’re a small organization in Alaska, with one really new development person and maximum of one year of experience in EA for the most senior of us. Alaska is notorious for its Permanent Fund Dividend — Alaska residents receive dividend checks every October from a fund seeded by oil money — and several years ago the Pick.Click.Give. program was created, allowing folks to pledge and donate money from their dividend to Alaska nonprofits. Organizations receive the donations as one single check, along with a spreadsheet of the individual donors.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

Erica SafferAnswer

Community Manager

Hi Melissa!

You can use Bulk Upload to add multiple attributions for a single contribution in EveryAction. Here's how you can approach this specific situation with the program donations:

Required File Format
The spreadsheet should include these key columns:

VANID for the contribution (main donation record)
VANID for the attribution (each individual donor)
Attribution Type (required)
Attribution Amount (required)
Attribution Note (optional, limited to 100 characters)

Process Steps

Prepare your spreadsheet with one row per attribution (so ~80+ rows for your situation)
Upload your file through Bulk Upload
Select "Apply Contributions" when mapping columns
Choose "Contact Attribution" option
Map your columns to the required fields

Important Notes

All attribution types must be valid in your system
Attribution amounts must be numeric with maximum 2 decimal places
You cannot attribute the same contact more than once to the same contribution
Consider saving your mapping as a template for future use

For this specific situation, I recommend first creating the main contribution record for the total amount received, then using bulk upload to add all the individual attributions from your spreadsheet of donors.

Erica

Show previous replies

Liz Ragland

@melissa Sorry this is not working out for you as expected. Our support team let me know they would recommend a back end edit to fix this for you. I will get this ticket started for you. Stay tuned.

Liz at Bonterra

M

melissaAuthor

Rising Star III

Thanks, Liz!

M

melissaAuthor

Rising Star III

Sally, thanks for all your insights!

Megan Dunn-Paul

Rising Star III

This doesn’t work. The bulk upload wizard to edit contributions does not allow you to select a column for attribution name, it only allows the selection of one entry for all records. That isn’t helpful when there are 300 attributions for a corporate matching donation.

Megan Dunn-Paul

Rising Star III

I rescind the above statement. My whole database crashed shortly after this, and, after a reboot, the option to select a column instead of apply one value to all records was available.

Megan Dunn-Paul

Rising Star III

The recommended method above does not work. You cannot “Apply Contributions” without a contribution amount column in the spreadsheet--it is one of many required fields that the key columns above omit. You also cannot reuse a column, so you cannot use the Attribution Amount for both the contribution amount and attribution amount. Last month I was able to bulk edit a contribution to add hundreds of attributions by uploading a file with columns: Contribution ID, VANID (attribution contact), and attribution amount. This worked then.

However, in repeating this same process today, I received an error for duplicate contribution IDs, and it will not apply the edits.

I also have to restart my computer--not just EveryAction--each time I try to use bulk edit with an uploaded file, otherwise it does not give me the option to select a column, it only allows me to apply one value to all records.

Many corporate matching contributions have multiple (sometimes over one hundred) attributions for each contribution. This is a significant limitation in the EveryAction system that should be a priority to fix.

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