In our last post, we learned about the power of Leads. That’s great for contact data collection, but what about collecting moolah? Benjamins. Cheddar. Dough.
Let’s get more money into your bank account!
The world of online payments can be confusing by itself, without even thinking about how this would integrate with Salesforce. I want to help you understand exactly what’s going on, and how you can make life easy for your donors and staff to raise money for your organization.
I’m going outline how online payments work with Salesforce, step by step, so you can make sure you can find a system that works best for your needs.
- Donation app collects the donor’s information
Before your donor can give you money online, you need to have a secure donation webpage for her to give you money. This can come in a lot of different formats, including one-time or recurring payments, credit card or PayPal payments, pre-defined or open payment options, etc. Let’s just say, there’s a lot you can do here that’s a bit beyond the scope of this post.
Need help creating a donation page that converts more donors? Take a peek at our Soapbox Engage Donations app! - Payment sent to a payment gateway
After your donor clicks the submit button on your donation page, their credit card information is securely sent to a payment gateway company, which does a few important things for you. The payment gateway will confirm the credit card account is valid, has enough money in the account, and can have its funds prepared for movement from your donor’s account to your bank account. Don’t blink, because this whole process is happening within a few quick seconds. - Payment information sent to the donation app system
Let’s assume that the donor’s credit card was valid and had the correct amount of funds in it. The payment gateway gives the transaction a big thumbs up, and sends that approval information to your donation app system. Your donation app might then do some recording of this transaction in its own system. - Donation app sends data to Salesforce
This is the mission critical part for your organization’s data sanity. Your donations app, if built well, will know exactly what flavor of Salesforce you’re using. For example, it should know that you’re using the Nonprofit Starter Pack, with the Household Account model, and the Payments creation system turned on. Avoid systems that just throw your donor data over the proverbial data wall, forcing you to deal with duplicates, bad data entry, etc. - Donations app + Salesforce moves your data to its proper home
Once the data is in Salesforce, it’s time to do some scrubbing and routing. We don’t want dirty data, duplicate data, or data in the wrong place. A great donations app will process your data in Salesforce to make sure it’s moved to the right place so you can run Reports and view Dashboards with this updated data right away. - Final feedback loop between Salesforce and your donations app
After all the data has been moved to Salesforce, your donations app should confirm that all the right data made it to its correct home in Salesforce. If not, it should provide a way for you to see what might not have made it. - Money sent from the donor to your bank account
Typically, most of the payment gateways require anywhere from 2-7 days to move money from your donor’s account to your bank account. If it takes longer than that, you’ll find yourself in a cash flow conundrum, and should start looking for a better payment gateway. - Dancing
Not enough people celebrate the success of all these new donor funds streaming in through your website. Creating a little email alert workflow in Salesforce to help your team know when you’ve hit great milestones or converted a big donor would be fantastic. I also highly recommend dancing. It’s good for the heart and the soul!
So there you have it, online payments with Salesforce demystified! Now, there’s still a whole world of determining the best way to record all this in your financial accounting system, which is outside the scope of this post and anyone’s average day...but important nonetheless. I’d be happy to chat with you about best practices there too!
Now that you’re ready to collect more money with Salesforce, in our next post, we’re going to talk about how to convert more bystanders into donors through engaging forms that go beyond the standard web-to-lead form in Salesforce. Get your creative half ready for some best practices!
Happy engaging!
Other posts in this series
- Simple online engagement secrets every savvy Salesforce organization should know
- How Salesforce Campaigns can rock your data world
- Get inspired by beautiful website + Salesforce integrations
- Improve supporter nurturing by making Salesforce Leads your friend
- You are here >> Raise more money with Salesforce by demystifying online payments
- Gain supporters faster by going beyond Salesforce Web-to-Lead forms
- Increase community engagement without pressing a key through drip marketing
- Protect your Salesforce org from spam with one simple trick
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