This article explores the form-level Receipts area of the control panel, including the possible types of receipts, the process for creating and editing receipts, and how to include PDF receipts.

Please note: This article is about form-specific donation receipts, which can be accessed and customized within your donation forms. If you're looking for information on Global Receipts, click here.

Receipts Table

The Receipt Title column displays the name of the receipt, which you can customize on the Edit Receipt page.

The System Title column displays the type of receipt, which I’ll explain in detail below. The receipt types you’ll see are determined by the form's settings. For example, you'll only see Kiosks receipts if you have an active kiosk attached to the form.

Receipts are divided into categories, which are displayed in the Category column.

Using the filter/search bar, you can search by a receipt’s Receipt Title or System Title or filter by the receipt’s category.

Receipt Types

Now let’s look at each type of receipt, organized by category.

Donation

Standard Donation: Sends whenever someone makes a one-time donation. It may also send if you don’t turn on any other types of donation receipts, such as recurring.

Abandoned Gift Reminder: Can be enabled in the form's Donation Settings and sends to potential donors who choose to share an email address to be reminded to complete an abandoned gift. To read more about enabling and customizing the Abandoned Gift Reminder, check out this article.

Dedication Notification: Sends to the recipient of a donation dedication.

Recurring Donation Created: Sends upon the creation of a recurring donation if the gift is scheduled to beginning billing at a later date.

Recurring Donation Billed: Sends each time a recurring payment bills. If a recurring gift is scheduled to begin billing immediately, the donor will receive the Recurring Donation Billed receipt instead of the Recurring Donation Created receipt.

Recurring Donation Decline/Error: If there’s ever a processing error or if a donor’s method of payment is declined, they’ll receive this receipt with the error message received from the issuing card company included.

Recurring Donation Completed: When a recurring donation’s final occurrence has been billed, the donor will receive this receipt.

Recurring Donation Ending Soon: Donors will receive this receipt 30 days before their recurring payment schedule is ending OR if their payment method is expiring.

Recurring Donation Cancelled: Donors receive this notification via email when their recurring donation is cancelled.

Recurring Donation Billing Soon - MasterCard: This notification only goes to Mastercard users with recurring gifts that bill semiannually or annually. The email will send one week before each installment of the gift bills.

Events

Event Registration: Sends when someone registers for an event.

Event Donation: Sends if someone makes a donation during event registration.

Kiosks

Kiosk Donation: Sends when a donation is processed through a kiosk. If you don’t have an active kiosk linked to the form, you won’t see the Kiosks category.

Invoices

Please note: If you don’t have invoices activated for your organization, you won’t see the Invoices category. Contact support@qgiv.com if you have questions about invoices.

Invoice: Sends if a donor chooses to be invoiced when selecting a payment option.

Invoice Reminder: Send at a specific interval of your choice after the initial invoice.

For more on invoice receipts and reminders, click here.

System

Refund: Sends when a refund is processed.

Toggling and Deleting Receipts

You’ll notice that some of the receipts can be toggled on or off.

The receipts that CAN’T be turned off are the default receipts that will be sent if you choose not to use optional receipts to communicate with your donors in a different way. Also, receipts that were configured at the organization level can’t be toggled in form-level receipts, and the Abandoned Gift Reminder is controlled by the form's Donation Settings.

Turning off certain receipts may trigger the delivery of a different type of receipt. For example, if you have all recurring donation receipts turned off, your recurring donors will always receive the standard donation receipt.

You’ll also notice that only “Custom” receipts can be deleted from this table.

Custom Receipts

At the top of the Receipts page, you’ll see an option to Add Custom Receipt.

Clicking that button will allow you to create custom receipts for Events, Kiosks, and/or Invoices.

Depending on how the form is configured, you may not see all of these options. For example, you will only see Custom Invoice Reminder if you have activated invoicing for your donation form.

When you create a custom event or kiosk receipt, you’ll follow the guidelines outlined in the receipt editing process described later.

The process for Invoice Reminders is a little different. If you have Invoices activated for your organization, check out this article.

Before saving your custom event or kiosk receipt, you’ll need to choose which of those items you’d like the receipt associated with. You can do this by selecting one, multiple, or all from the choices below the receipt body editing area.

Here’s what you’ll see when editing a custom event receipt:

You can choose to associate the receipt with all events on the form or just specific ones.

If you select All Events, another field will appear, giving you the option to Select Event(s) to Exclude.

Editing Receipts

Next to every receipt in the Receipts table, you’ll see the Edit Receipt option.

Editing receipt content for each receipt type is a nearly identical process, so we’ll take a look at a Standard Donation receipt in further detail.

Please note: The process for editing the Abandoned Gift Reminder is a little different from other receipts. Check out this article to read more about customizing that message.

The first thing you’ll see when editing a receipt is a dropdown to Select or Create a New Version. In addition to the default version of each receipt, you can create up to 10 more custom versions.

In the dropdown menu, you’ll see options to Create New Version or select from the list of Form-Level Versions and Organization-Level Versions. You’ll also see which receipt is currently active for the form in parentheses.

The Version Information for the version you’re editing will appear in the upper right corner of the page. This box displays the Version Name, the name of the user the version was Saved By, and when the version was Last Saved.

If you’re creating a new version, that box will appear after you finish and save.

If you select an organization-level version of a receipt, you’ll be able to view the Version Information, but you won’t be able to make any changes to the receipt at the form level.

You’ll be prompted to edit the receipt at the org level in a box at the top of the screen.

Version Information

When creating or editing a form-level receipt, start by giving your receipt a Version Name. The name you fill in here is for administrative use only. It won’t display to people who receive the receipt.

Please note: The Qgiv donation receipts interface was updated in May 2021. Receipt versions created before this update will be named by default with their last saved date. These version names can be changed to something more specific if you want.

Next, you’ll need to enter a Receipt Title. This will auto-fill based on the type of receipt you’re editing, but you can customize it if you want. The receipt title will only be displayed to admins and won’t be seen by recipients.

You can enter a Receipt Description for informational purposes. This is useful for noting the differences between versions and is also only visible to admins.

The Category for the receipt is static and can’t be changed. It will reflect the category of the default receipt, and the box will be greyed out.

Receipt Content

You’ll need to enter a name that will display as the sender of the receipt in the From Name field.

You’ll also need to enter a valid corresponding email to display as the Reply To Email Address. This email address will then receive any replies from donors receiving the receipt. It will be displayed as the Reply To Email Address even when sending test receipts.

Next, add a Subject line for your emailed receipt.

If you want to send this receipt to a Qgiv user to keep track of what users are seeing when they receive your receipt, toggle on Include Additional Recipients and add the user's email address.

The Receipt Body area is where you can add your personal touch by creating custom receipt content.

The toolbar in the Receipt Body section contains a number of features to help you customize your content; we've highlighted a few of the most popular tools below.

Source displays the text in HTML format so you can make changes.

With the Insert Media option, you can upload or choose from previously uploaded content to add to your receipt. You can also delete items from this library.

You can change the font, style, size, color, and alignment of your text by using the basic text editing tools.

To insert and/or remove a hyperlink, click the icon shown below.

To insert a table, click the icon shown below.

You can click Insert Tags to include tags that populate based on information in your system. For example, the %Donor% tag would automatically populate with the donor’s first and last name.

If you’d like to add images in your receipt, you can do so by dragging and dropping files into the text editing area from your computer.

You’ll also see the Conditional Content drop-down menu, unless you’re editing a Refund receipt. With this tool, you can further customize your receipts by including specific language for donors who meet certain criteria.

When you enter a conditional content box, the content will only populate in the receipt if the donor or registrant performs an action to trigger its appearance. For example, if you enter a conditional content box for a certain restriction, it will only display if a donor makes a donation to that particular restriction. If you enter the Any Restriction conditional content box, it will display if a donor makes a donation to any restriction.

To insert a conditional content box, select the one you’d like to include from the drop-down menu. It will automatically appear in the receipt editing area.

You can further customize each content box by entering your own text. Just click inside the box and enter your preferred message. You can include info tags and images within conditional content boxes, as well.

When a donor receives a receipt containing a conditional content box, they’ll only see the receipt text in and outside of the box. They won’t see the border, restriction title, or tool tip icon. Here’s a comparison:

Edit view:

Donor view:

If you add more than one conditional content box, you can drag and drop to reorder them within the editing area. You can also delete boxes by clicking on a box’s border and hitting Delete on your keyboard.

Pro tip: If you have multi-restriction giving turned on, you can use the %Restrict% tag to display the amount given to each restriction.

PDF Receipts

In transaction receipts, you can include a locked PDF receipt for your donors’ record-keeping purposes. Just below the Receipt Body area, you’ll see the Include PDF Receipt toggle.

You can toggle that option on for the following Qgiv donation form receipts:

Standard Donation
Recurring Donation Billed
Recurring Donation Completed
Event Registration
Event Donation
Kiosk Donation
Refund
New versions of the above default receipts

When toggled on, an area will appear in which you can add content that will appear in the PDF receipt. You can include any messages or disclaimers you’d like to add for your donors, such as “Please keep for your records.”

When your donors receive their email receipt, the PDF will be sent as a downloadable, locked attachment. This means that the content cannot be altered by the recipient. Here’s a peek at what your donors will see:

PDF Receipt Example.png

If you are working on a custom event or kiosk receipt, you’ll also need to select which event or kiosk to assign the receipt to. Click here to see what that looks like.

Sending a Test

When you’ve configured your receipt content to your liking, you can choose to Send a Test before you save your changes.

This will cause a window to appear in which you can enter the email address to which you’d like to send the test receipt. You can decide whether you want your Additional Recipients to receive the receipt test.

If you choose to Populate tags with dummy data, your test email will include random data so that you can see how the tags populate.

Please note: Your actual transaction data will not populate in a test receipt.

Click Save to save your work.

After you click Save, a Review Details modal will appear. You’ll have a chance to review the Receipt Information one more time before officially saving it.

Your new version will replace the previous version in the Receipts table, but you can always go back to an earlier version by returning to the Edit Receipt page and selecting the version you want to use from the dropdown menu.