How Donor Giving Works, End to End

Gifts come through three doors, and the door decides how NP Ledger learns about the gift.

• Through a fundraising platform (Stripe, PayPal, Givebutter, Donorbox, GiveSmart). The platform already knows exactly who gave and how much — so that's the source of truth. NP Ledger captures each gift from the platform and later matches the platform's lump payout to your bank deposit. Never try to rebuild the donors from the bank line — one deposit for twenty gifts can't tell you who the twenty people were. The platform can.
• A direct gift or grant to your bank (wire or ACH — a foundation grant, a major donor's transfer). There's no platform in the middle, so here the bank line is the source. When you import your bank activity, NP Ledger reads the payer and matches it to a supporter.
• Cash or a check in hand. No platform, no bank feed yet — you record it yourself in about a minute.

Whichever door a gift comes through, it then travels the same five steps.

1. Capture — the gift lands in your books as a recorded donation.
2. Attribute — it's attached to an individual donor (a supporter record).
3. Thank — an acknowledgment goes out to the donor.
4. Reconcile — when the platform's payout hits your bank, the deposit is matched back to the gifts behind it and the fees are split out.
5. Report — at year end, every attributed gift flows into the donor's giving statement.

The rest of this page walks each step, and tells you plainly what's automatic today and what you do by hand.

Most of the donor-tracking pain nonprofits feel comes from one wrong turn: treating a batched payout as a single deposit and losing the donors inside it. Capture the gifts at the source and every downstream step — the thank-you, the fund totals, the January tax statements — fills itself in. Skip it, and you're reconstructing a gala's worth of donors from a bank line that can't help you.

Platform gifts are captured one of two ways:

• Automatic recording (a donation connection). Stripe, PayPal, Givebutter, and Donorbox notify NP Ledger the moment a gift comes in, and it's recorded within moments — you do nothing. See How Automatic Donation Recording Works.
• A file you upload. GiveSmart (both Events/auctions and Fundraise) and any platform batch export come in through Aggregator Batch Import: you download the platform's export and drop it in, and NP Ledger turns the batch into one recorded donation per gift. There is no automatic pull for these platforms today — the upload is the capture step.

Direct bank gifts and grants are captured when you import your bank statement or use a bank feed and record the deposit as a donation.

Cash and checks you record yourself with Quick Entry or a manual donation entry.

A recorded donation is only useful if it's tied to a person. NP Ledger matches each gift to a supporter (a donor record) by email — if a supporter with that email already exists, the gift joins their history; if not, a new supporter is created from the name and email on the gift. Automatic platform gifts also fill in phone and mailing address where the platform provides them (see How Automatic Donation Recording Works for exactly which platform sends what).

• Anonymous gifts (a donor who chose "give anonymously") are attached to a single per-organization Anonymous Donor record, so the money is tracked without personal details.
• A gift with no email can't be matched to a supporter automatically. That's fine for a general bank deposit, but for donor gifts it means no donor detail and no year-end statement — so bring donor gifts in through a donor-aware path (a platform connection, Aggregator Batch Import, or Spreadsheet Import with an Email column) rather than the general bank-line importer.

When a gift is recorded, NP Ledger can send the donor an acknowledgment automatically. Two things have to be true first: your organization has donation receipts turned on, and the donor has an email on file. When they are, here's what sends on its own:

• Automatic platform gifts (Stripe, PayPal, Givebutter, Donorbox) send a thank-you as the gift records.
• Recurring gifts are thanked once, on the first gift of the subscription — not on every monthly renewal. This is deliberate: donors on a monthly plan don't want twelve identical receipts a year.
• Uploaded batches (GiveSmart Events, GiveSmart Fundraise, other platform exports) send a thank-you per gift as the batch records.
• Spreadsheet imports send a thank-you for each row that has an email.
• Bank-matched and cash/check gifts send a thank-you for ordinary (unrestricted) gifts; manual entries have a checkbox you tick when you want the receipt to go out.

You can always see what went out — and resend one by hand — in the Donation Notification Log.

Platforms don't send each gift to your bank one at a time. They hold a batch of gifts and drop one payout a few days later, minus their processing fees. Until that payout lands, the gifts sit in Donations in Transit (a transit account NP Ledger manages for you).

When the deposit shows up on your bank statement, you settle the payout: NP Ledger matches the batch of gifts to the deposit, moves the money from Donations in Transit into your checking account, and records the difference as a processing-fee expense. The gross gifts, the net deposit, and the fees all tie out.

Accountant note: Under ASC 958-605, contribution revenue is recognized when the gift is received, not when cash arrives — so NP Ledger recognizes the gift at capture and carries it in the transit account as a receivable until the payout settles. Processing fees are expensed at settlement.

Because every gift is attributed to a supporter as it's captured, your year-end giving statements build themselves from data you already have — no separate donor spreadsheet to keep. Any gift attached to a donor is included, no matter which door it came through. The one requirement is a donor: a gift with no supporter (see Step 2) won't appear on a statement.

For gifts where the donor got something back — a gala dinner, an auction item — only the deductible portion (the amount paid minus the item's fair-market value) is reported, per IRC §6115. GiveSmart Events auction purchases handle this at import: an item with no fair-market value on file is held back until you set it, so a statement can never overstate a donor's deduction. See Importing a Donation Platform Batch for how that's resolved.

A quick reference for what happens on its own and what you do by hand. (Thank-yous below assume donation receipts are turned on for your organization and the donor has an email.)

• You're setting up for the first time and want to know which of your fundraising tools can record on their own — the table above and Setting Up a Donation Connection.
• You use GiveSmart, a silent-auction platform, or any tool that isn't in the connection list — you'll be uploading its export; see Importing a Donation Platform Batch.
• A foundation grant or a big donor wired money straight to your bank — that's the bank-line door; record it from your bank import.
• A bank deposit doesn't match the gifts behind it — that's a reconciliation question; see Settling Payouts and Clearing Balances.
• January, and you need tax statements — they're already built from the donor detail you've been capturing all year; see Donor Giving Statements.

• How Automatic Donation Recording Works — the behind-the-scenes flow for connected platforms
• Setting Up a Donation Connection — connect Stripe, PayPal, Givebutter, or Donorbox
• Importing a Donation Platform Batch — bring in GiveSmart and other platform exports
• Settling Payouts and Clearing Balances — match a payout to the gifts behind it
• Donor Giving Statements — year-end tax statements, built from your donor detail

Open the AI Help panel and try:

• "Which of my donation platforms record automatically?"
• "How do GiveSmart auction gifts get into NP Ledger?"
• "Why isn't a donor showing up on a giving statement?"