Getting Started

ExceedFurther is a powerful fundraising tool that enables you to perform your administrative tasks, like recording and acknowledging gifts, and to maximize your results by analyzing your data and planning your strategy. To take advantage of these capabilities, it is important that you take the time to understand how ExceedFurther fits into your organization and how it will be used. We highly recommend that you sign up for training with Arreva before you begin entering data.

If you have not had data converted from another system and are starting from scratch, following the steps below will help you get organized and ready to go. If you have had data converted from another system by the Arreva team, please read the After Your Data Conversion topic and follow the steps listed there.

As you go through these steps, keep a list of questions that come up. You can give this list to your trainer, or you can call Tech Support directly with your questions.

Step 1 - Explore the Interface

To understand the basics of ExceedFurther, read the How it Works topic and click through to some of the underlying topics. Be sure to include Navigation and the Icon Bar.

Review the topics on How to Add a Household, How to Add an Organization and How to Add a Gift. These will introduce you to the structure of the data and give you a sense of some of the codes and data fields that you will need to define for your organization in Steps 3 and 4.

Step 2 - Add Users

You have been supplied with a single user name and password for accessing ExceedFurther. Your organization has been added to the ExceedFurther database, with one contact person defined as the user. To see your organization in ExceedFurther, use the People and Org Navigator, Quick Lists to open the All Households and Orgs list.

Each additional person who is going to access ExceedFurther requires their own user login and password. As a first step, you need to add your staff members to your organization's record in ExceedFurther. Each user must have a different email address to use as a login.

Your license includes an unlimited number of users. For each one, you will need to decide if that user should have unlimited access to all parts of the system or should be restricted to only certain screens and tasks. If you expect to restrict certain users, you need to set up user roles. After you have defined roles, you can add users to the system.

You do not have to set up all of your roles and users now. You can define roles and add users at any time. For now, just add the users who need immediate access.

If you wish to have added security, consider using Multi-factor Authentication when your users log in.

Step 3 - Define Tags and Codes

There are many places where you will be adding tags and codes to names, gifts, activities, events, and so forth. Before you enter data, you need to define and add these codes to ExceedFurther. Read the About Codes and Using Tags topics to understand what you need to define. Codes and tags are set up through the Admin tab, on the Codes tab.

You can add additional codes and tags at any time as you need them. As a start, you should focus on those codes and tags that apply to the data you are currently entering, such as recent names and gifts, major donors, volunteers, and other VIPs. Before adding historical data, you should consider how much detail is relevant to your future work.

Step 4 - Define User-Defined Fields

ExceedFurther comes with many already-defined fields of data. These have been designed to cover most of what the typical non profit organization uses in their fund raising activities. However, there may be some special pieces of information that you wish to track that apply only to your organization. For these you define your own fields, referred as User-Defined Fields. These can be added to virtually any data entry screen. You should carefully consider the need before you add a lot of these special fields. They add to the burden of data entry, introduce additional opportunities for error, and may make your screens look crowded.

Read Adding User Defined Fields for information on how to set up these fields.

Step 5 - Add a Few Names and Gifts

Begin by adding a few names, perhaps your board of directors and your staff. Add the appropriate tags so you can easily find these names again for a mailing or report. Make sure the tags are added at the appropriate level: household, couple or person.

As an example, take a board member who is part of a couple. Enter the couple, making sure to check the "Show Person 1" or "Show Person 2", depending on whether you entered the board member as the first or second name in the couple. Once you have saved the couple, you'll need to select the board member's individual name and add the Board tag to that name. You might also wish to add a Board Household tag to the Household for use in mailings such as invitations.

Use the Quick Add Navigator to add some gifts to the names you entered. If you discover that you need some additional codes to adequately record the gift information, save the gift, and open the Admin tab to add the needed code. The quickest way to reopen the gift to make changes is to open the Gift Manager Gifts Tab. Select the gift and click on the Edit button.

When you open the Gift Manager Gifts Tab, you should see all of the gifts you just entered. Read the Using Lists to learn how to manipulate the list of gifts. These same functions apply to every list, or grid, you will see in ExceedFurther. If you see any errors, select the gift and click on the Edit button to make changes.

Step 6 - Explore the Bio Tab

Use the Quick Search box at the top of the screen to look up one of the names you entered. Drill down on the name to open the Bio Tab. Take some time to explore the various tabs to see the kinds of information that you can add about your constituents.

Step 7 - Create a Thank You Letter

Use the Communications Navigator to enter a thank you letter template, adding the appropriate merge fields.

After you have created the template, generate thank you letters for the gifts that you entered.

If you sometimes prefer to create each letter as you enter gifts, add another gift to see how you can use the template to create the letter as you add the gift.

If you use emails to thank your donors, experiment with adding a gift to your own record and sending yourself an email so you can see how it works.

Step 8 - Run Some Reports

Use the Report Navigator to run some reports to review your data entry.

Try a Short Name List, under Bio Reports, including all addresses, phones and emails. Try it again using a filter to select those tagged as board members..

Run a Gift Transaction Report, under Gift and Pledge Reports, for this week's gifts to see the gifts you just entered.

Under Donor Analysis and Statistics, select One Period All, enter this week as the Gift Entry Date and Group by Reason. This will show you all the gifts you entered, grouped by Reason code. Try it again, selecting a different Group By value.

Step 9 - Review Default Settings

There are a number of default settings you can use to speed data entry and improve accuracy. These include such things a setting automatic values for some fields when you add a new record, or selecting the form of name and salutation that you prefer for your organization's communication with donors.

These defaults are set on the Admin Tab, under Client Defaults. They apply to all users in your organization. You cannot set different default settings for each user. Many of the default settings are simply for filling in values when you add a new record, like a name or gift. There is no need to use any of these unless you are entering data where every record has the same value in a certain field, like state or county.

Other default settings refer to interfaces, like IATS for credit card processing, or WealthEngine for prospect research. This is where you put your user name for these other products.

Toward the bottom of the Client Defaults tab is a list of formats. These are important, and you should take a moment to review the settings. This determines how names and salutations are formatted as you enter new households and organizations. Note that you can select a different format as you enter each name, but you should select a default that matches your most common use.

This is also where you set your fiscal year dates and define how your giving total is calculated for each donor Household or Organization. Exceed Further automatically calculates a Gift Total, adding gifts, dues, pledges and sales. On the Bio screen you can also see "Total Giving", "YTD Total Giving" and "Last Year Total Giving." These totals appear as zeroes until you define the criteria to use for their calculation. For example, you may wish to include the value of in-kind gifts or volunteer hours as part of Total Giving. You do this at the end of the Client Defaults tab, using these steps.

In addition to Total Giving, you can define a series of custom totals and custom counts, each reflecting exactly what you want to add into each calculation. This option is only if you wish to create totals using different criteria from the Total Giving you have already defined. There is no need to set up these custom totals now. You can return to this tab any time to set them up. For more information, read User Defined Totals and Counts.

Step 10 - Set up Online Fundraising

Now that you have set up your codes and user-defined fields, and you know how to acknowledge gifts and run reports, you are ready to set up your ExceedFurther online fundraising page. You can incorporate the codes and user defined fields right into your web page.

Gifts that are made through your online page appear automatically in ExceedFurther as soon as they are processed. You find them in list of new transactions under the Online Transaction Navigator. In order to ensure that they are attached to the correct donor, they do not appear in a donor's giving history immediately. First you review them and initiate the process that will automatically compare each name to names already in ExceedFurther. In this way the gifts are attached to the correct donors and duplicates are not created. To learn more about this process, read the Online Transactions Overview.

Step 11 - Ready to Go!

There are many topics that this Getting Started did not cover. Here are some ideas for further exploration.

If you are going to enter pledges and pledge payments, read about adding pledges and using the Pledge Manager.
For recurring gifts, learn about the Recurring Gifts Tab.
If you have many gifts in memory or in honor of someone, read the Tributes topic.
If you are a membership organization, the Membership Overview topic should be reviewed before entering dues.
For information about entering Activities and using the Calendar, read Adding Activities.
Finally, if you have purchased additional modules, you can read the overview of each and drill down for more details:

Remember if you have questions, Tech Support is only a phone call or email away!