Can I manually control Contact IDs?

There are two primary reasons why a ministry would want to manually create a Contact ID instead of allowing DonorWise to create one automatically:

• 1. The ministry is switching to DonorWise and the numbers are already in use in their old system (one-time creation)
• 2. The ministry wants designations to match the responsibility centre (RC) in the accounting system (ongoing creation)

There are to ways to control the ContactID. 

1. On the View Contacts screen, you can right-click on "New Contact" and choose "With Custom ID"
   (requires DonorWise 2.0 r22 or newer). 

      2.    It is also possible to import a Contact ID when importing a contact.

Import numbers from an existing system

When your ministry is using a donation system with numbers already assigned to donors and designations, it can be helpful to retain those numbers in DonorWise. Here is an example of part of a contact import that includes donors, staff members, and ministry designations:

Import numbers on an on-going basis

Some ministries would like to manually assign contact ids on an on-going basis. There are two primary reasons for doing this:

• 1. To match the contact ids to existing Responsibility Centre in the accounting system. This can help reduce confusion staff may experience, leading to the question, "Why do I have two different numbers?", especially when they did not have two numbers before.
• 2. To keep various designation IDs in a range. For example, some ministries have staff member designations starting with 2 (like 20001-20999), and ministry designations starting with 5 (like 50001-59999).

There are many disadvantages to importing designation ids after the DonorWise system is up and running:

• 1. It is possible that a desired designation number may already be in use
• 2. A new staff member may already exist in your system as a donor, and creating a new designation for them would duplicate them in your system.
• 3. Responsibility Centres can be recycled/reassigned for the needs of the ministry, but Designation numbers are permanently assigned.
• 4. Two single staff members with existing designations may marry and their designation numbers become out of sync with their RC.
• 5. When a staff spouse dies, a new ContactID is created for the surviving spouse, but the underlying RC does not change.
• 6. Contact IDs cannot be edited or reassigned once they are created.
• 7. There is not a one-to-one relationship between designations and RCs. It is possible for one RC to have many designations, only one of which would match.
• 8. Assigning ranges is not a good practice because the reasons behind certain ranges blur over time, or in growing ministries, it is actually possible to run out of numbers within the range.

Recommendation

We recommend importing existing Contact IDs if they are already in use in your system, but letting DonorWise assign Contact IDs once DonorWise is in use.  DonorWise generates contact ids in a way that produced a check digit.  This makes it more difficult to unintentionally type in the wrong contact id for data entry.