Donations: taking one-off and monthly gifts

Donations let your storefront take a gift instead of a sale. A donor names an amount, pays it, and you get a record of who gave what. It is a separate thing from selling: there is no cart, no shipping and no order.

Donations are off in every store until someone turns them on.

Turning donations on: two switches, not one

This trips people up, so it is worth reading before you go looking for the page.

Switch one turns the module on. Donations are a module, and like Standing Orders the module starts off in every store. Go to Settings → Modules, turn Donations on, and save.

Donations are still in limited rollout, so the sidebar link is hidden even after you switch the module on. Ask us to open it for your store. Everything else on this page works, and the AI assistant can already answer how much you have raised.

Switch two opens donations to the public. That one lives on the Donations page itself. Until you press it, your storefront cannot take a gift.

They are separate on purpose. Ticking a module in your dashboard should never quietly open a payment endpoint on your website to the internet, so the second one is a deliberate act on a page that tells you what it does.

You also need a payment provider connected. A store with no provider cannot take a donation at all, and the request is refused rather than quietly recorded. Brainerce will not let you press the second switch until a provider is connected: the page tells you to connect one first. Closing donations always works, with or without a provider.

Check your sales channels' domains when you open donations. When you press the switch, Brainerce lists any sales channel that has no domain (a TEST channel is allowed to have none). It does not stop you, and a channel with no domain does not stop your other channels. But a payment provider that sends the donor back to your site after paying cannot take a donation through a channel with no domain; that donation fails before the donor reaches the payment page. Give the channel a domain, or take donations through a channel that has one. Not every provider needs it.

If you would rather not click through the dashboard, the AI assistant can do the second switch for you: "Turn on donations for this store." It cannot do the first one, so turn the module on yourself.

Which payment providers work for donations

Donations work with payment providers that open their own payment page: Stripe, PayPal, Takbull and Morning. The donor is sent to that page to pay and then comes back to your site. MAX works the same way but is not in the Apps marketplace yet, so you cannot install it today.

Cardcom and Grow do not work for donations yet. They show the card form inside your own page, which donations do not support. If one of them is your store's payment provider, your storefront cannot take donations for now, even with donations switched on.

iCredit works only when it is set to open its own payment page, not when it shows the card form inside your page.

Why my donation page shows an error

Because donations have not been opened on the Donations page, you have no payment provider connected, your payment provider is Cardcom or Grow (they do not work for donations yet), or the sales channel the donation came from has no domain (a provider that sends the donor back to your site has nowhere to send them). Turning the module on is not enough by itself: that only reveals the page in your dashboard.

This is worth calling out because donations behave differently from every other optional feature in Brainerce. Most features hide themselves when they are not set up: a coupon box with no coupons just does not appear, and nothing breaks. Donations do the opposite. While they are switched off, every donation submitted is rejected, so a donation page that is already live will take a donor's name, email and card details and then fail on the last step.

If you asked a developer or an AI to build you a donation page, tell them to check the store's donationsEnabled setting and show nothing when it is off. That is the fix; it is a one-line check.

Why a donation failed (payment declined, setup problem)

Open a failed donation from the Donations page and you see the reason it did not go through, plus what to do about it:

• Store setup problem. Your store or the sales channel is not set up to take this payment, for example the channel has no domain or the payment provider is not ready yet. Fix it in your settings. Asking the donor to try again changes nothing until you do.
• Payment declined. The donor's card or payment method was refused. They can try again with another card.
• Payment provider unreachable. The payment provider did not answer in time. No money was taken, and trying again usually works.
• Payment provider error. The payment provider returned its own error. No money was taken. If it keeps happening, send the message shown under the reason to support.

Donors never see the reason. Brainerce never sends it to your donation page, so a donor only sees whatever general error your page shows. That is on purpose: telling a stranger exactly why a card was refused helps people testing stolen cards. The reason is shown to you, in the dashboard, and you can also ask the AI assistant why a donation failed.

Older donations that failed before this was added may show no reason.

What the donor fills in

A donation page is one form on one page. What Brainerce supports:

• A donation amount. Preset buttons (many organisations use something like 18 / 36 / 72 / 180 / 360 / 1000) plus a free "other amount" box so a donor can type any figure.
• Their email, which is required, and their name, which is not.
• A fund, if you have set any up: where the gift should go. See Funds.
• A dedication: your own wording, such as "For the recovery of" or "In memory of", plus the name of the person. If you have not set up your own wording, the choice is "in honour of" or "in memory of". If a donor picks a dedication, the name is required, and the donation is refused without it. See Dedications.
• Receipt details: who the receipt is made out to, a phone number, and an ID or company number. These are optional, except that the ID field is shown as required when you issue tax receipts and ask donors for their ID. See Receipt details.
• An anonymous checkbox. See "What anonymous actually means" below, because it is narrower than most donors assume.
• A message to your organisation.
• Give monthly, optional: the donor chooses a one-off gift or a monthly donation, and can choose how many months. See Monthly donations.
• "Cover the processing fee", a checkbox that adds the card fee on top of the gift so you receive the full amount. Worth offering: research on donation forms puts acceptance at roughly 55-60% when the option is there.

The fee cover is charged on top of the gift and never taken out of it. A ₪180 donation with a ₪6.30 fee cover charges the card ₪186.30 and records the gift as ₪180. On a monthly donation the fee cover is added to the first gift only.

Monthly donations a donor starts themselves

A donor can choose to give every month on your donation page, for example "₪180 a month". It needs donations to be open and a payment provider that can charge a saved card.

Your donation page has to be built to offer the monthly choice. A page built before monthly giving existed offers one-off gifts only, until someone (or the AI that built it) adds the choice.

How it works:

• The first gift is charged straight away, on your payment provider's page, exactly like a one-off gift. The donor's card is saved at the same time.
• The same gift then repeats every month, with the same campaign, fund, dedication and receipt details. Each monthly gift appears on this page as its own donation, marked "From a standing order".
• The donor can choose how many months, such as 12 gifts of ₪180 (the first gift counts as one of the 12), or give until the donation is cancelled. Monthly is the only option: there is no weekly or yearly giving.
• A processing fee the donor covers is added to the first gift only.

Where you see it. Open any gift from a monthly donation on the Donations page: its Monthly donation section shows the amount, how many gifts have been given (and of how many), and the next charge date. You do not need the Standing orders module for this.

Behind the scenes every monthly donation is also a standing order. Brainerce creates a plan called Monthly donation on the Standing orders page the first time a donor gives monthly, and each donor appears there as a schedule. The monthly charges run whether or not you can see that page, and the page itself stays hidden until you turn on Standing Orders under Settings → Modules. See Standing orders.

What the donor is emailed. The first email is "Your monthly donation is set up" instead of the usual thank-you, and it carries the donor's personal link to manage the monthly donation. Every later monthly gift's thank-you email carries the link too. See How donors manage their monthly donation.

Which payment providers can take monthly donations. Only a provider that can charge a saved card without the donor present. If yours cannot, the donor is told monthly giving is not available before anything is charged, and they can still give once.

"Monthly setup failed" on a donation

Rarely, the first gift is paid but the payment provider does not send back a saved card, so the monthly schedule cannot be created. The donation then shows Monthly setup failed in the list, and The monthly donation was not set up when you open it.

The donor was charged once, and only once. The first gift stands and counts like any other gift. Nothing more will be charged, so contact the donor if they still want to give monthly.

Cancelling or pausing a monthly donation

Open one of the donor's gifts on the Donations page. In its Monthly donation section choose Pause, Resume or Stop monthly donation (stopping asks you to confirm, and never refunds gifts already given). A pause never ends by itself: a paused monthly donation shows "Paused" with a reminder date (a month out), but nothing resumes it when that date passes, so it stays paused until you choose Resume here or the donor resumes it from their link. Paused gifts stay in the Standing orders banner as "paused and waiting for you", so they are not forgotten. You need the Manage donations permission. This works without the Standing Orders module, which starts off. Once a monthly donation is stopped, the section no longer appears.

You can still do the same from the Standing orders page if that module is on, or ask the AI assistant: "Cancel Sarah Cohen's monthly donation."

Most donors can do it themselves from the link in their emails, so you only need to step in when one asks you to. See How donors manage their monthly donation.

How donors manage their monthly donation

Every monthly donor gets a personal link in their "Your monthly donation is set up" email and in each later monthly thank-you email. It opens a page hosted by Brainerce, in your store's language (Hebrew or English). The donor needs no account and no password.

On that page the donor sees each of their monthly donations: the amount, how many gifts so far (and of how many), the next date, and the campaign, fund or dedication. They can:

• Pause. One plain Pause button, with no choice of months. The donor then sees "Paused" with a note that giving does not restart by itself and that they can resume it from this page. The donation stays paused until they, or you, choose Resume.
• Resume a pause they chose, at any time.
• Stop the monthly donation. They are asked to confirm first.
• Update the card the monthly donation charges, if your payment provider is Stripe. See How a donor updates the card on a monthly donation.

Changing the card works with Stripe only, for now. With Grow, Cardcom or any other provider the page shows no card and no Update card button, and a donor whose card stopped working has to contact you. You then resume the monthly donation from the Donations page (see below), or the donor starts a new one.

How a donor updates the card on a monthly donation

When a donor's credit card expires, is replaced or keeps being declined, the donor can put a new card on their monthly donation themselves. This works only when your store's payment provider is Stripe. Grow, Cardcom and the other providers cannot save a new card without charging it, so with them there is no Update card button and the donor has to contact you.

1. The donor opens the personal link from any of their monthly donation emails. With Stripe, each monthly donation that is still running shows the card it charges, for example "Card: visa •••• 4242", and an Update card button. With any other provider neither appears.
2. The donor presses Update card. It opens Stripe's own secure payment page. The donor types the new card there. Nothing is charged on that page, it only saves the card. Brainerce and you never see the full card number.
3. The donor lands on a "Card saved" page. It has no link back; to see their donations again, the donor opens the link in their email again. If the donor leaves the Stripe page without saving, nothing changes.
4. The new card takes over within a few minutes, once Stripe confirms it. From then on every monthly gift is charged to the new card.

What happens next depends on the state of the monthly donation (all Stripe only):

• It was paused after failed payments, or was between retries. It resumes by itself and the missed gift is charged right away, usually within minutes. If that charge fails too, it is retried like any monthly payment. You do not need to press Resume.
• It was active. Only the card changes. The next gift is charged on its usual date.
• The donor paused it, or you paused it. The pause stays as it is. Only the card changes.

You do not need to do anything. There is no button in the dashboard for you to change a donor's card, and you never see more of the card than you did before. On the Donations page you can still only pause, resume or stop a monthly donation.

The link is personal and expires. It works for 30 days. A donor who lost it, or whose link expired, can ask for a new one from your website, if your site offers a "Manage my monthly donation" form: they type their email and the link arrives by email. Asking for a new link turns the old one off, so a forwarded or leaked link stops working. The form always answers the same way, whether or not that email gives monthly, so it never reveals who your donors are. Your website has to be built to offer that form; ask whoever built your donation page (or the AI that built it) to add it.

When a monthly payment fails

If a monthly charge fails, for example the card expired, Brainerce tries again on the following days, up to 3 tries in all. Each time a try fails, the donor gets an email ("We could not charge your monthly donation") with their management link. With Stripe, that email tells the donor to update their card from the link. With any other provider it tells them to contact you.

After the third failed try the monthly donation is paused, not cancelled. The donor is told, and you get an email that it was paused. Open the donation on the Donations page: the Monthly donation section says it was paused after failed payments. Press Resume to try the same card again, with a fresh set of 3 tries.

If the card itself has to change: with Stripe, the donor updates it from their link and the monthly donation resumes by itself, charging the missed gift right away (see How a donor updates the card on a monthly donation). With Grow, Cardcom or any other provider the donor cannot change the card, so they would start a new monthly donation and you stop the old one.

Test donations: the "Test" badge

A donation taken while your payment provider is in test mode moved no real money. It is shown with a Test badge.

Totals on this page. While your payment provider is still in test mode, test donations are counted in the totals band, and a note under it says so. Otherwise a store that is only trying out its donation page would see nothing but zeros. Once you switch the provider to live, test donations drop out of every total with nothing to clean up.

Campaign progress bars never count a test donation, in test mode or not. A campaign you are testing therefore stays at 0 after a test payment, even though the donation shows as Paid. This is expected, not a fault. The Campaigns tab says so while your provider is in test mode.

Monthly donations started in test mode stay test. One is charged only while the provider stays in test mode. When you switch the provider to live, it is suspended and never charges a real card. The reverse is also true: a real monthly donation is suspended if the provider is switched back to test mode.

Why Stripe sent no receipt email after a test payment

Stripe does not send receipt emails for test payments. A donation paid with a test card never emails the donor a Stripe receipt. Stripe lets you send a test receipt by hand from its own dashboard.

For real payments, Stripe's emails are Stripe's, not Brainerce's. Whether Stripe emails a receipt depends on your own Stripe account's customer email settings. Brainerce does not send Stripe's receipts, cannot switch them on for you, and does not turn Stripe's invoice into an email. The invoice and receipt pages are still available as links on the donation's Payment record.

A Stripe receipt is not a tax receipt. It proves a card payment. A section 46 donation receipt is a separate document, see Tax receipts for donations.

What anonymous actually means

An anonymous gift hides the donor's name on your public pages: a donor wall, a thank-you screen, anything a visitor can see.

You still see who they are. The name and email are on the donation record exactly as with any other gift, because you need them for your own records and for saying thank you.

Say this on your donation form. Donors read "anonymous" as "untraceable", and if they later discover you have their name they will feel misled, even though nothing went wrong.

Donation campaigns (fundraising goals)

A donation campaign is a fundraising drive or appeal with its own page: "Building fund 2026", "Winter coats appeal". It is not an email campaign. It sends no email to anyone; it is a target your donors give towards on your storefront.

Each campaign has a name, a description and a picture, and optionally:

• A goal, such as ₪60,000. Your storefront shows a progress bar ("₪45,000 of ₪60,000 raised"). Without a goal it shows just the total raised.
• A start date and an end date.
• Its own preset amounts, whether donors may type their own amount, and a minimum and maximum gift.

A donation given on a campaign page is recorded against that campaign. A donation given anywhere else is a general gift, exactly as before. You create and edit campaigns in the Donations area of the dashboard, or ask the AI assistant: "Create a donation campaign for our building fund with a goal of ₪60,000 ending December 31."

How the progress bar counts

• It counts the gifts as donors gave them. A processing fee a donor chose to cover is not added to the campaign total.
• Refunds are not taken off. A refunded gift still counts toward the public progress figure. Your own refund figures are on the Donations page.
• The gift count is gifts, not people. A donor giving monthly counts once every month.
• Monthly gifts keep counting after the end date. A monthly donation started while the campaign was running counts toward it every month, even after the campaign ends, because the donor pledged it to that campaign.
• Test donations are not counted. A gift taken while your payment provider was in test mode never moves the bar.
• Only paid gifts count. A donation that was started and never paid does not move the bar.

What happens when you reach the goal

Nothing stops. Reaching the goal does not close the campaign. It keeps taking donations and the progress figure goes past 100% (for example 112%). If you want to stop taking gifts, pause the campaign or set an end date.

What happens at the end date

After the end date the campaign stops taking donations. Its page can still show the final total, but a donor cannot give to it: a donation form submitted after the end date is refused.

Monthly donations already running keep going. A donor who started giving monthly before the end date keeps being charged, and those gifts keep counting toward the campaign. To stop one, open the donation on the Donations page and choose Stop monthly donation.

Extending reopens it. Move the end date later and the campaign starts taking donations again straight away. You do not need to switch anything else back on.

Before the start date, the campaign shows as upcoming and does not take donations yet.

Draft, active, paused and archived

• Draft: hidden from your storefront while you prepare it.
• Active: shown, and taking donations (between its start and end dates, if it has them).
• Paused: still shown on your storefront, with its progress, but not taking donations until you make it active again.
• Archived: hidden from your storefront and no longer taking donations, but kept with its history and totals.

How to turn a campaign off. Click the three dots at the corner of its card on the Campaigns tab and choose Pause, Activate or Move to archive. An archived campaign is listed only while Show archived is on, and Restore brings it back as Paused, so it does not start taking donations until you activate it. The same choice is the Status field when you open the campaign. You need permission to manage donations to see the three dots.

A campaign cannot be deleted. Archive it instead. The donations given to it keep pointing to it, so your records of what each appeal raised stay complete.

If donations are closed for your store, no campaign is shown on your storefront at all, whatever its status.

A campaign can have a default fund, so gifts to it are filed under that fund unless the donor picks another. Choose it when you create or edit the campaign. See Funds.

Funds (designating where donations go)

A fund says where the money goes: "Scholarships", "Building", "Food bank", or one of several institutions run by the same organisation. Donors pick it on the donation form, and every gift records the fund it was given to.

A fund is not the same as a donation campaign, and it is not a sales channel:

• A campaign is how you raise money over a period ("Winter appeal 2026"), with a goal and dates.
• A fund is what the money is for. One campaign can raise money for a fund, and a fund can receive gifts from many campaigns and from general gifts.
• A sales channel is which of your websites the gift came through. That is recorded separately.

Setting up funds. Open the Donations page and go to the Funds tab. Give each fund a name and an optional description. You can also ask the AI assistant: "Create a donation fund called Scholarships." Translating a fund's name for other languages, and changing the order funds appear in, are done through the AI assistant for now; the Funds tab does not have those settings.

How a gift gets its fund:

• On a campaign page, the form starts on the campaign's default fund, and the donor can choose another.
• On your general donation page, the donor chooses a fund, or none.
• If you have no funds at all, the donor sees no fund choice and nothing changes.

Your donation page has to be built to show the fund choice. Creating a fund does not add a picker to a page that was built before funds existed. If someone built your donation page earlier, ask them (or the AI that built it) to add the fund choice. Until then, gifts from that page have no fund, or the campaign's default fund on a campaign page.

Retiring a fund. A fund cannot be deleted. Archive it instead: it stops appearing on your donation form, and past gifts keep pointing to it, so your records of what each fund received stay complete.

Seeing what each fund raised. Open a fund in the Funds tab to see what it was given and its total after refunds, with a link to its donations. The donation list on the Donations page can be filtered by fund, as well as by campaign and sales channel. You can also ask the AI assistant: "How much did the Scholarships fund raise?"

A fund is a label, not a separate bank account. Every gift still goes to your one payment provider account. Brainerce records which fund each gift is for so you can report on it and move the money yourself; it does not hold funds apart or pay them out separately. A gift goes to one fund, never split between several.

Dedications (in memory of, for the recovery of)

A dedication lets a donor give in someone's name: "For the recovery of", "In memory of", "For the success of", "In honour of". The donor picks one and types the person's name.

You write the wording. Communities phrase these differently, so Brainerce does not impose a list. In the Funds tab of the Donations page, add each dedication exactly as you want donors to see it. They appear on the form in the order you added them. You can also ask the AI assistant to add one, and to translate the wording for other languages or change the order, which the Funds tab does not do yet.

Your donation page has to be built to show your dedications. A page built before this feature keeps whatever choice it already had, usually "in honour of" or "in memory of", until someone updates it to read your own wording. If you set up no dedications of your own, a page can offer that basic choice or none.

Renaming or retiring a dedication never changes past gifts. Each donation keeps the wording exactly as it was when the donor gave, so a gift made "For the recovery of" a person still reads that way after you rename or retire that dedication. A retired dedication stops appearing on the form.

Donation emails use your wording too. The thank-you and monthly donation emails show the dedication exactly as the donor picked it, such as "For the recovery of". Before this was fixed, an email could wrongly say "In memory of" for a dedication you had written yourself.

The name is required. If a donor picks a dedication and leaves the name empty, the donation is refused.

Receipt details donors can give (name, phone, ID number)

These are the details a donation receipt needs. If you issue tax receipts through a receipt app, they go on the receipt: see Tax receipts for donations. If you do not, Brainerce keeps them on the donation so they are ready when you issue the receipt in your own system.

A donor can optionally give:

• A name for the receipt, when the receipt should be made out to someone else: a spouse, a parent, a company.
• A phone number.
• An ID number or company number (for example an Israeli ID number for a section 46 receipt).
• A public name: the name they are happy to have shown on your public pages, such as "The Cohen family". If the gift is anonymous, no name is shown at all.

ID numbers are stored encrypted, and you only see the last four digits. Open a donation on the Donations page and you see the receipt name, the phone number, the dedication and the last four digits of the ID number. The full number is never shown in the dashboard, never sent to your storefront, and never included in webhooks. That is on purpose: a full national ID number is sensitive, and the fewer places it appears, the safer your donors are. The one place the full number does go is Cardcom, when you issue tax receipts there, because the Tax Authority requires it on the receipt.

Whoever builds your donation form decides whether to ask for these details. If your form does not ask, the donation works exactly as before. When receipts are on and Ask donors for their ID number is on, the form is told to show the ID field as required, but a donation without an ID is still accepted. It just gets no receipt until you add the ID.

Tax receipts for donations (section 46)

Brainerce can issue a tax receipt for each donation, through a receipt app connected to your store (today that is the Cardcom app). Each receipt is a real document in that provider's books, and the provider reports it to the Tax Authority. You find everything on the Donations page, in the Receipts tab.

Why this matters in Israel. From 1 January 2026, an organisation approved under section 46 must issue donation receipts only through the Tax Authority's digital donations system, using receipt software that has connected to it. Every receipt needs the donor's ID number (or company number), and cancelled receipts are reported too. The connected receipt app is that software (today, Cardcom).

What you need before you turn receipts on

• An app that issues receipts, installed (today the Cardcom app, with its documents module). Receipts can only be turned on while one is installed. If you have more than one, you choose which one issues the receipts.
• Your organisation registered with the Tax Authority's digital services (as an authorised agent for digital donation receipts) and with your receipt provider (today, Cardcom). Brainerce does not do this registration for you, and cannot. Do it with the Tax Authority and your receipt provider first.
• The receipt app switched to live. While it is in test mode (today: Cardcom in test mode), no receipt is issued at all. See Test donations never get a receipt.

You do not need to take the donations themselves through the receipt app. A donation paid with Stripe, for example, still gets its receipt from it (today, Cardcom).

Which app issues a receipt. If you picked one on the Receipts tab, it issues every receipt. If you did not, a gift's receipt comes from the app that took the payment when that app can issue receipts, and otherwise from the first app you installed that can. A refund credit always comes from the app that issued the receipt it reverses, because a credit has to cite that provider's own document. If that app has been uninstalled, the credit shows Not issued instead of being sent to another app.

Cardcom is the only app that issues receipts today. The Receipts tab lists the apps that can, so when another one becomes available it appears there with no change on your side. Brainerce does not issue the legal document itself.

Receipt settings: when receipts are issued

On the Receipts tab you choose:

• When to issue. Automatically, as soon as a donation is paid, or When I issue it, where each paid donation waits for you with the status Waiting for you until you click Issue receipt.
• Monthly donations. A receipt for every charge, or One receipt a year. See Annual receipts for monthly donations.
• Refunds. Issue a credit receipt automatically, or I will issue credits myself. See Credit receipts for refunds.
• Ask donors for their ID number. On by default. The Tax Authority requires the ID on every receipt, so turn this off only if you collect it another way.
• Email the receipt to the donor. On by default. The receipt provider sends the document to the donor's email address.

Donor ID numbers on receipts

When receipts are on and Ask donors for their ID number is on, your donation form is told to show the ID field as required. A donation without an ID is still accepted, so a donor is never turned away. It just gets no receipt: it shows Not issued with the reason that the ID is missing. Open it and click Add ID and issue to type the ID and issue the receipt.

The full ID number is sent to the receipt provider, because it has to be printed on the receipt. You still only see the last four digits in the dashboard.

Receipt statuses

Every receipt shows one of these:

• Issuing: on its way to Cardcom. It usually takes under a minute.
• Issued: done. You see the document number and a link to open it.
• Not issued: the receipt provider refused it, or something stopped it (for example the donor ID is missing, or the receipt app is in test mode). The reason is shown on the receipt. Fix it, then click Try again. When the donor ID is missing, click Add ID and issue instead.
• Check your books: the receipt provider never confirmed whether it created the receipt. See below.
• Waiting for you: you chose to issue receipts or credits yourself. Click Issue receipt or Issue credit receipt.

Receipts that need your attention

The Needs attention filter on the Receipts tab shows every receipt you have to act on: not issued, check your books, and waiting for you. The same receipt and the same buttons also appear when you open the donation itself.

"Check your books" means Brainerce does not know whether a receipt exists. The request reached the receipt provider, but no answer came back. Brainerce never issues it again by itself, because that could give one gift two legal receipts. Instead:

1. Look in your receipt provider's documents (today, Cardcom) for a receipt for this donation.
2. If it is there, click It is with the provider and type its document number. No new receipt is issued.
3. If it is not there, click Not there, issue again and confirm. Only then is it issued.

Donations paid through Cardcom itself

If the donor paid through Cardcom, Cardcom may already have created a document together with the payment. In that case the receipt goes to Check your books instead of creating a second document. If the existing document is a donation receipt, record its number. If it is not, issue the donation receipt.

Annual receipts for monthly donations

With One receipt a year, a monthly donor does not get a receipt for every charge. Instead, each donor gets one receipt for all their monthly gifts of the previous calendar year, issued from a date you pick (15 January by default). Completed refunds are taken off the total. The receipt is issued in the new year, and its payment line is dated 31 December of the year it covers.

One-off gifts still get their own receipt straight away.

Check with your organisation's accountant before choosing one receipt a year. Whether an annual receipt suits your organisation is a tax question, not a Brainerce one.

Credit receipts for refunds

When you refund a donation that already has an issued receipt, Brainerce issues a credit receipt for the refunded amount, once for every completed refund. Partial refunds each get their own credit receipt. If you chose I will issue credits myself, each one waits for you instead.

If a refund is still being processed by the payment provider, its credit receipt is not issued automatically. Once the refund has gone through, open the donation and click Issue credit receipt.

A donation with no issued receipt gets no credit receipt, because there is nothing to reverse.

Test donations and receipt app test mode never get a receipt

• A test donation never gets a receipt. No money moved, so nothing belongs in your books.
• While the receipt app is in test mode, no receipt is issued, even for a real donation. The receipt shows Not issued and says the receipt provider is in test mode. This keeps real donor names and ID numbers out of a test account. Switch the receipt app to live, then click Try again.

What donation receipts do not do

• No receipts without a receipt app. Grow, Stripe and the other payment providers cannot issue receipts themselves. A donation paid through any of them can still get its receipt from the receipt app, as long as one (today, Cardcom) is installed.
• No Tax Authority registration. Brainerce does not register your organisation with the Tax Authority or with your receipt provider. Reporting happens through your account with the provider.
• No receipt for test donations, and none while the receipt app is in test mode.
• No receipt for a donation without an ID number until you add the ID.
• No receipts from the AI assistant. The assistant can tell you which receipts need attention and what your settings are, but issuing, trying again and recording a number are done on the Receipts tab.

The Donations page: tabs, columns, filters and a gift's details

The Donations page has four tabs: Donations (every gift), Campaigns, Funds and Receipts. A totals band above the list shows Raised, Net after refunds, Donors and Pending (see Gross and net totals). The Close donations button at the top right is the second switch described above. While donations are closed the page shows This store is not taking donations with an Open donations button instead of the list.

Columns on the Donations tab. Show, hide and reorder them with Columns (Working with tables).

Find and filter. The search box in the top bar matches the donor's email, the donor's name and the tribute name. The Filter button has one filter, Status, with Paid, Pending and Did not arrive. Did not arrive covers both Failed and Voided gifts, because a gift the donor abandoned and one a card declined are the same answer for you. Beside it are three pickers: All campaigns, All funds and All channels. They combine with search and Status. Clear filters resets them, and an empty result says No donations match your search or filter.

Export. Tick rows and choose Export to download donations- and today's date as a CSV. Columns: donor, email, gift, fee covered, total charged, currency, status, campaign, fund, tribute, anonymous, source (One-off or From a standing order) and date. An anonymous gift is exported with the donor's real name and email and an Anonymous donation flag, because the export is your own record. The date column is the date the gift was paid, or created when it never was.

Open a gift from its row's action menu (or from a receipt on the Receipts tab) to see its details window:

• Gift, Fee covered by donor, Total charged, Tribute, Fund, Email, Phone, Received (date), Source, and the Public name the donor chose to show.
• Receipt made out to and ID / company no. when the donor gave receipt details.
• Donor's message, when they left one.
• Payment record: status, amount charged, amount refunded and method. When the payment provider reported them, it also shows Invoice from the payment provider and Receipt from the payment provider, which open the provider's own hosted pages (Stripe does this). Donations paid before these links were added do not have them, and Brainerce does not fetch them afterwards.
• A badge Refunded with the amount once a refund has been made.
• On a failed gift, Why it did not go through with a category and a hint: Store setup problem (fix it in settings, trying again fails the same way), Payment declined (the donor can try another card), Payment provider unreachable (no money taken, trying again usually works) or Payment provider error (no money taken; send the message to support).
• No payment recorded. This gift was never completed on a gift that was never paid.
• On a test donation, a note that no real money moved and that it is not counted in any total.
• The Monthly donation section for a monthly gift (see below).

A person with permission to manage donations also sees two buttons. Refund appears on a Paid gift and asks Refund this donation? before sending the money back to the donor's card: it cannot be undone, and Brainerce does not notify the donor. Void this donation appears on a Pending gift that never completed. Without that permission the buttons are not shown. See Refunding a donation.

Donations do not appear in Orders

A donation is not an order and never shows up in the orders list, in any order report, or in your sales figures. That is deliberate: a gift is not a sale, and mixing them makes both numbers wrong.

So if you search Orders for a donation and find nothing, that is not a bug and it does not mean the donation failed. Ask the AI assistant for your donation totals, or "list donations", instead.

A donation that a donor started and never finished paying sits as pending. Pending money is not money raised, and it is left out of your totals for that reason.

Gross and net totals (raised vs. after refunds)

The Donations page shows two money totals side by side:

• Raised is the gross figure: the gifts as donors gave them, with refunds not taken off.
• Net after refunds is what the donors were charged, including any processing fee they chose to cover, minus every completed refund. Below it you see how much was refunded.

Test donations (taken while your payment provider was in test mode) are left out of both figures once your provider takes real money. While it is still in test mode they are counted, so you can try your donation page and see it work, and the page says the figures include test donations. Switching the provider to live drops them from the figures by itself. A refund that has started but is not confirmed yet is not taken off the net figure. Net is before your payment provider's own fees, which Brainerce does not see; your provider's payout report shows those.

Refunding a donation

A refund returns real money to the donor's card. Only a Paid donation can be refunded, and it needs the Manage donations permission.

• In the dashboard: open the gift and press Refund. This refunds the full charge, including a processing fee the donor covered. There is no field for a smaller amount there, and BOBO cannot refund a donation from chat. A partial refund can only be sent by an assistant connected over MCP with an API key (its refund tool takes an optional amount), not by the Claude or ChatGPT apps, which have no refund action.
• The donor is not told. Brainerce does not email the donor about a refund.
• A refund cannot be undone, and you cannot refund more than was charged.

Refunding is different from voiding: a paid donation is refunded, and a pending one (a gift that was started and never paid) is simply voided, because there is no money to send back.

Refunding in Stripe or another payment provider's dashboard

A refund you make directly in your payment provider's own dashboard is recorded on the donation too, as soon as the provider reports it. The donation stays paid, and its payment record shows how much was refunded. Partial refunds add up: two refunds of 30 and 20 show as 50 refunded. Refunding the same money twice is not possible, because a refund is never recorded for more than what is still left on the payment.

Pending donations that never finish

Brainerce checks pending donations with your payment provider every 15 minutes, starting 30 minutes after the donor began. If the provider says the donor did pay, the donation becomes paid even if the provider's confirmation never reached us. If the donor never paid, the donation is closed as voided after 48 hours. A donation is never closed while the provider still reports the payment as in progress.

This check runs for Stripe, Takbull and PayPal. With other providers, a pending donation waits for the provider's confirmation.

What Brainerce does not do

Read this list before you promise anything to a board or a donor.

No tax receipts without a receipt app

Brainerce issues tax receipts only through a connected receipt app (today, Cardcom). Without one installed, it issues no receipt of any kind and reports nothing to any tax authority. It records the donation: the amount, the donor, the date, the payment reference and any receipt details the donor gave. Grow, Stripe and the other payment providers cannot issue receipts themselves, but a donation paid through any of them can still get its receipt from the receipt app. See Tax receipts for donations.

Brainerce does not register your organisation with the Tax Authority or with your receipt provider, and it does not support other countries' receipting schemes, such as Canada's CRA charitable receipts. If your organisation has a receipting obligation that your receipt app does not cover, keep the system you use for it.

Donors can update their card only with Stripe, and you cannot change it for them

A donor can start a monthly donation on your donation page and can pause or stop it from the personal link in their emails (see How donors manage their monthly donation). Changing the card it charges works only when your payment provider is Stripe (see How a donor updates the card on a monthly donation). With Grow, Cardcom or any other provider the donor cannot change the card: when it stops working, the monthly donation is paused after 3 failed tries and the donor is told to contact you.

There is no way for you to change a donor's card from the dashboard, with any provider. Only the donor can enter a new card, on the payment provider's own page.

There is no donor account or login for donations either: the emailed link is the only way in, and it expires after 30 days.

Your donation page has to be built to offer monthly giving. A page built before this was available offers one-off gifts only, until someone adds the monthly choice.

Standing-order donations do show up here. Every time a recurring donation charges, that cycle appears in this list marked "From a standing order", and it counts toward your raised total. So the page is the full picture of what came in, however it arrived. See Standing orders.

No separate bank accounts per fund

Funds do exist: see Funds. What Brainerce does not do is keep each fund's money apart. All gifts go to your one payment provider account; a fund records what a gift is for, and moving the money is up to you. A gift goes to one fund, never split between several.

No donor wall or public donor list

Brainerce records who gave. It does not publish that anywhere. If you want a donor wall, whoever builds your storefront builds it from the donation data.

No matching gifts, pledges, or gift-in-kind

There is no employer-matching lookup, no pledge you can record now and collect later, and no way to record a non-cash gift.