Templates allow you to save column mappings for future use down the road. While we are constantly trying to provide more templates out-of-box, we may not have one defined for your system. You can create one, and save it for future use.
When adding a new template, we support the following headers. This just tells you what we can actually import and what we can’t. For example, “notes” is a frequently requested field to be imported with donations. Unfortunately, Planning Center doesn’t support importing notes so you won’t see it our supported fields. As a general rule the more columns if not all you can provide the better.
Supported Columns #
Identification Columns #
We use these columns to identify who the donation should be attributed to. At least 1 is required, but we recommend you specify all of them if possible.
- RemoteId** – If you imported your people into PCO already and used the remoteId column, your donation import will practically 100% accurate if you include this column name. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, refer to this planning center article or reach out to the person that performed your people import as that step is recommended BEFORE doing this.
- Email – The email address column name.
- Phone Number – The phone number column name.
Other Columns #
- Secondary Email – If your file has a primary and secondary email, you can put the secondary here.
- Secondary Phone Number – If your file has a primary and secondary phone number, you can put the secondary here.
- First Name** – First name column name.
- Last Name** – Last name column name.
- Fund* – Fund column name.
- Amount* – Amount column name. This can be formatted with a dollar sign ($), whole numbers (12000), or with decimals (101.65).
- Fee – The fee taken out of a donation.
- Campus – The campus column will match to existing campuses in Planning Center.
- Contribution Type* – Contribution type column name. This is the type of contribution (e.g. online, card, ACH, check, etc…). These are pretty standard across all platforms, but if you find your import is attributing them improperly, please let me know.
- Contribution Date* – Contribution date column name. This is the date of the actual contribution. This is important for tax purposes so that the donor gets credit for the donations they made in the correct year and will also be important if you run reports with a time parameter.
- Check Number – Check number column name. If you specify a check number column name and the contribution type is ‘check’ we’ll be sure to import the check number as well as it is printed on statements at the end of the year.
- Label – The label column name will match the value in this column to existing labels in Planning Center.
* indicates a required field. When adding your template, if all required fields are not supplied, you won’t be able to use the template.
** need for create new people. If you have the create new people option on, you will need to supply these fields for it to actually create new people.
