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Author: Joel Kristenson
Last Updated: 2016-07-20
Overview
This article walks through the steps to create a giving history report. This particular report is year-by-year, but you could just as well filter yours month-by-month, week-by-week, etc.
This article is primarily for nonprofit customers, but political customers can use this same technique to create filtered columns by election, date range, event, among other things.
Tip: If you prefer a video walk-through, click here.
Steps
Navigate to your Contacts (Voters/Donors) list.
Run your search query, then click the [Format] drop-down, and select Columns. In my example I searched for all individual donors in the database, which populated 1,412 records.
Scroll down the right-hand list of columns and check the ‘ContributionTotalUser’ column(s). Check as many columns as you want to filter by i.e. if I was going to filter by 6 years, which I do in this example, I would check all six of the boxes.
Navigate to the Format tab, and click the first ‘Filter’ hyperlink to begin filtering that virtual contribution column.
Enter the date range you want to filter by, and click [OK]. In this example I filtered by the last 6 years, so I started with 1/1/2010 - 12/31/2010.
Repeat these steps for each of the ‘filter’ hyperlinks. Once you complete that, you’ll want to double-click in each of the ‘Heading’ cells to rename those column headers. My example is below.
Click [OK] to add those columns into the grid. By default they will display on the far right, you’ll need to click [Search] to refresh the values with the correct counts. My example is below.
If the report is formatted the way you prefer then you’ll want to save it for future use, so you or other database users don’t have to rebuild it each time.
Click the Format drop-down and select Save As...
Create a relevant name for the format and click [Save]. I called mine “Giving History (Year x Year 2011 – 2015)”.
This completes the steps.
If you need to load up the saved format you created, or assign it as a default, you can do that here:
If you need to print or export the report you can do that here:
Here’s an example screenshot of the last page of my finished report:
The related resources below link to many other relevant articles/videos, that will help teach you how to fully utilize the formatting tools in your database.
Related Resources
Article: Creating and Saving Default Formats for Reporting with the Grid
Article: Add Attributes, Attribute Dates, and Attribute Notes to the Grid by Formatting them in as Columns
Article: Creating Formats for Custom Views and Editing of Your Data
Article: Creating Formats
Article: Walk List – Selectable Format
Video: Filtered Contribution Columns in Format
Video: Filter Using New Date Controls
Video: Attributes – Add attribute dates and notes to your list
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