What's New in netFORUM Enterprise 2015.1

Help

You no longer have to search the wiki to find field-level help for a netFORUM page. Just launch the new embedded help system and use the comprehensive Index or Table of Contents to find the help you need.

Accounting

• We consolidated redundant or sub-optimal routines to make batch closing run faster for batches with a large number of transactions.
• Now you can set a default transaction type for a batch. netFORUM applies this default batch when you are adding an Order and after you select a batch. Transaction type examples include prepaid, terms, and installments.
• Manage non-sufficient fund (NSF) checks and credit card chargebacks using new wizards.
• Find and identify NSFs and chargebacks easily.
• Apply fees when you process NSFs.
• Easily distinguish write-offs from ordinary payments in reports.
• Manage a customer's electronic payment gateway tokens with the new profile page. From the profile page, you can see payments, orders, and gateway decline messages associated with the token.

• A trial balance report has been added.

• Track and manage credit card declines from scheduled tasks in a dedicated area of netFORUM. Scheduled tasks use these declines to suppress excessive attempts on an invalid credit card, and netFORUM waits a number of days between subsequent attempts on a card that has failed.
• Create deeper and more informative queries of prices because of table joins added to the Price table.
• Process orders more easily with these usability improvements to centralized order entry (COE):

  • Order totals are organized in a vertical list instead of a horizontal list.

  • An Apply Credit link is more prominent and is enabled only when the customer has a credit.

  • The Add Product menu has larger font, no images, and is organized better.

  • The Product Look up or PLU field is renamed to the Quick add field and moved near the Add Product menu.

  • Personalize an installment payment schedule when adding an order.

  • Payment section better organized.

CRM

• Relate an organization to a household.

• Compare old and new addresses side by side with address change log child forms.
• Assign an activity date to customer requests or leave the default current date.

• Add additional customers to a customer request. For example, if you’re logging a group meeting or phone call to a customer request, you can add additional meeting participants to the request.

• Easily log an interaction with an organization or individual -- such as a phone call or a meeting -- in just a few clicks. Activity logging uses the underlying customer request feature, meaning your activity-logging and customer requests are all in one unified place.

Membership

• Through eWeb, now new or returning members can enroll in automatic membership renewal with auto-pay as long as they provide credit card or ACH information.
• Configure membership flow-down for a household similar to membership flow-down for an organization. For example with flow-down configured, if a household customer gets a family membership then the household members gain an inherited membership.

Events

Manage your event cancellations easily with the new Event Cancellation Report.

Sales

• Easily log an activity on an opportunity with an organization or individual -- such as a phone call or a meeting -- in just a few clicks.
• Tailor the Sales Module to your sales team. Configure a hierarchy constructed of product types, opportunity series, and opportunity stages. For example, you can have a series and set of stages specifically for prospective memberships, and an entirely different set for advertisers, and another set just for booth sales.

Conflict of Interest

• Use forms easier with enhanced pages.
• Navigate among requests, reviews, reviewers and disclosures easily with added links and child forms.

User Experience Improvements

• Understand look ups, search pages, and list results better with enhanced buttons.
• Stay on task while filling out a handful of long forms because netFORUM no longer jumps to the top of the page when the form refreshes.
• Understand your netFORUM error messages with a plain language error and a more technical message displayed for the same error.
• Understand better what the database requires with error messages that instruct you about database check constraints.
• Find your columns more easily in the Query Designer with alphabetical sorting of columns. This must be enabled by a new user option.
• Learn what some netFORUM fields do and how they relate to other fields with field-level help.

Fundraising

• Manage solicitor teams and team members in the Fundraising module.
• Choose to calculate donor giving totals by your organization's fiscal year or by calendar year.
• View additional giving calculations including highest gift date and amount for this year and last year.
• Attach files to campaigns.
• Specify donation ask amounts customized based on a donor's giving history using Ask Ladders. Include those ask amounts in postal letters, emails, and on eWeb.
• Enjoy user interface refinements to the constituent and gift profile pages.

Gift Processing

• Use the new Add Donation wizard to add signed and verbal pledges, recurring gifts, one-time gifts and split gifts in one, unified place.

• Track gifts of property.

• Attach a premium to a fundraising source code. When you add a source code, the premium is preselected for you.
• Track combined giving totals for a household by automatically giving soft credit to a constituent on gifts from household members.

• Link a matching gift to the original gift that triggered the matching gift. This new link allows for a 360 degree perspective on matching gifts and the donors and gifts that generated the match.

• Personalize acknowledgment text with two new merge fields that you can splice into acknowledgment templates or exports.

• Your constituents can make a donation and become a member. Configure memberships to be premiums for certain types of donations. Give your constituents the option to give the membership to another person. For example, an aunt can make a donation and give the resulting membership to her niece.
• Give donors the option to give the premium they earn with their donation to a different customer. For example, a grandfather can give a donation that earns him a pen. The grandfather can choose to have the pen shipped to his grandson.
• Enter verbal / installment billing pledge payments with the help of a new wizard. Enter the amount of the next pledge payment, even if that amount if higher or lower than the suggested amount due. netFORUM recognizes only the amount paid as accounts receivable. The remaining pledge balance is not recognized as accounts receivable. Verbal changed to Pending Signed in 2015.1 See the Gift and Pledge Comparison topic for details.
• Distribute a recurring gift across funds. For example, a donor can give a $100 monthly gift and choose to direct $60 to Fund A, $30 to Fund B, and $10 to Fund C. If this donation is by credit card, netFORUM authorizes a single $100 payment authorization during each installment, not three smaller transactions.

Online Donations

Through eWeb now donors can:

• see a summary of their historical payments, one-time donations, pledges, and recurring gifts through the new My Giving portal.
• upgrade and downgrade pledges and recurring gifts.
• make a pledge payment for verbal pledges.
• manage pledge and recurring gift credit card options.

eWeb

• Your customers can enjoy optimized log in, shopping, member directory, profile, and event registration pages.
• Your customers can enjoy mobile-friendly elements such as pages designed to eliminate left-to-right swiping.
• Your customers can enjoy tracking their shipments with a new link from the eWeb transactions page. You must configure shipment tracking in iWeb for this feature to appear.
• Your customers can enjoy mobile keyboard optimization. For example, tapping a number field opens the number keyboard. This requires one less tap from a mobile user and provides for a better mobile experience.

Marketing

• Easily manage email correspondence templates using the new Templates Profile page. From this one page you can see all the areas in netFORUM that reference this template.
• Identify which templates are used where and update them as needed with new template queries.

xWeb and Integration

• Add recurring gifts in xWeb.

• In xWeb, set a future date for a first payment on a recurring gift or installment order, while also passing credit card information.

• See booth activity summaries with a2z integration.