The Create Charity Sheet menu item is accessed via the Main Window Action menu. It creates a special type of export to a comma-separated-value (CSV) file that can be viewed as a spread-sheet via a program such as Microsoft Excel and can be very useful when running pledge campaigns for a particular charity. When you click this option, you will get a window that asks you to choose the charity you want to run against and the name of last year’s database. The system will first examine last year’s database and then the current database for the selected charity and produce a csv file with one row for each member and the following columns in each row:

Column 1: the member name

Column 2: this year's amount OWED for the selected charity (current pledges in current year's database)

Column 3: this year's amount PAID for the selected charity (current payments in this year's database)

Column 4: the unique ID code of the member

(Note: columns 1, 2, 3, and 4 are the same in the Tools function Export to CSV)

Column 5: blank (can be used during a phone campaign to write down the pledge the member specifies when contacted)

Column 6: the telephone number of the member

Column 7: last year's amount OWED for the selected charity (current pledges in last year's database)

Column 8: last year's amount PAID for the selected charity (current payments in last year's database and balance forward amounts for the selected charity from this year's database)


By having all this information at hand at the time of the solicitor’s phone call, the solicitor can determine what amount would be reasonable as a suggested donation.

In addition, once the new amounts pledged have been entered into column 5 of the spread-sheet, the entire CSV file can be imported into the current database via the Tools|Import Financial from CSV action of the Main Window. Since the columns that the system needs when Importing are only the 4 columns containing the name, amount owed, amount paid, and id number, the system will ignore the last 4 columns, so you must make sure that new pledges have been entered into column 2 and new amounts received for this charity have been entered into column 3. Then when you Import from the charity sheet, the system will automatically update your database with all the new pledges (and possibly, payments) that have been solicited from your members for the selected charity since the creation of the charity sheet.