With recurring payments, donors can give on a recurring schedule.

✔️ Prerequisites: To use recurring payments, you must

• have the Giving module enabled

• use Slate Payments

Find a donor’s recurring payments on their person record > Giving > Recurring.

Donors can continue their recurring payments indefinitely, or schedule them to end after a certain period.

📅 Recurring payments can be:

• daily

• weekly

• every other week

• monthly

• every other month

• quarterly

• biannually (every 6 months)

• annually

How recurring payments work

Form entry

A constituent enters a gift amount on a giving form.

At the Payment Form widget, they select Make this a recurring payment.

Recurring payment details appear, including:

• Payment period: In this example, quarterly

• Recurring start date: In this example, August 29, 2024.

• Recurring stop date: In this example, five years from the start date.

Behind the scenes

When they submit the gift form, Slate creates a schedule of recurring payments up to a year in the future.

• Find the recurring gifts on their person record under Giving > Recurring.

• Select the recurring gift to open the Recurring Payment Details popup.

Recurring payment details

In Recurring Payment Details, you can see payment details, including

• payment mode

• recurring gift status

• amount

• created date

• next payment date

• payment frequency

• payment account

• payment source

• customer ID

• number of payments to date

• number of expected total payments

Below, you can see the gift fund associated with the recurring gifts.

Edit recurring gift details

Select Edit at the bottom of the Recurring Payment Details popup to edit:

• the amount per payment

• the frequency

• the next payment date

• the donor’s credit card expiration date

• whether the gifts are in perpetuity

• the number of total payments after which the recurring gift should end

Select Suspend at the bottom of the popup to permanently suspend the recurring payment.

Changes made to the gift details, such as to the fund, the type, or its soft credits, do not apply retroactively to previous gifts. These changes appear when the next payment is processed and a new gift is created. The updated gift appears as pending until the next payment is processed.

Edit gift fund details

Select an existing gift fund to edit its details:

New gift

Select New Gift to create a new gift associated with the recurring payment:

After saving a new gift, you’ll notice an alert:

• Gift amount total does not match payment total. Update gift amounts as needed.

Edit the recurring payment amount to reflect the new total gift amount, and the alert disappears.

Payment statuses

This list represents the status of payments (upcoming, received), up to a year in advance.

Select a payment to view its details:

Changing payment methods for recurring gifts

While credit card expiration dates may be updated, expired credit cards will continue to auto-renew and be processed even if the expiration date has expired. Slate Payments, working with Stripe, work directly with card networks to allow these types of payments to continue to be processed without interruption. Should a donor set up recurring payments via a credit card—and the physical card expires—their recurring payments will still continue to process.

Since 2015, Stripe has worked directly with card networks to ensure cards will continue to work even if a physical card is replaced by a bank. This process only stays working as long as the credit/debit card account stays open.

Should future payment details or gift information need to be updated, changes should be made by selecting the appropriate payment within the recurring payments sub-tab within the giving tab.