Mass Update in eTapestry

It’s a sunny afternoon; you’re happily entering donations from your recent appeal when your boss walks up and drops a (figurative) bomb on your desk: Your organization is now consolidating the Annual fund and the Building Fund! Now you have to update all past donations to these funds to the new General Fund.  You smile, but your heart  sinks like a stone as the sun disappears behind a cloud, lightning flashes across the sky, and rain beings to streak down the windows.

How in the world are you going to update ALL those donations and keep your sanity?

The answer to that question is Mass Update.

“Mass update” sounds a bit scary, right? Saying the phrase out loud summons thunder alongside the lightning outside your darkening window.

You’re brave; you can face this head on. Let’s look at what you need to do to get this mass update on the road. First, you’ll need to find the donations to update. How do you find a grouping in eTapestry? Query! Every Mass Update requires a query, so that’s where you start.

You’ll be querying on just those donations that have the fund of Annual or Building. Create the query by following the steps below:

1. Go to Query.
2. Click the category you want to store the query in.
3. Click New Query on the tasks menu.
4. Name the query Annual and Building Fund Donations.
5. Set the Starting criteria to Base/All Constituents.
6. Set the Data Return Type to Journal Entries.
7. Under MATCH, select All.
8. Choose Commonly Used Fields from the Available Fields drop down menu and select Funds.
9. Select both Annual Fund and Building Fund.
10. Click Save and Preview.

Always make sure to preview your query and make sure that it is pulling the accounts (journal entries in this case) that you want to update.

Ok, Step 1 is accomplished!  In order to update those donations with a new fund, you’ll need to create the new fund:

1.  Go to Manage
2.  Hover over Defined Fields
3.  Click  Funds
4.  Select new Fund under the Tasks menu
5.  Type the name General Fund in the Name field.
6.  Enter any other information such as Receivable Accounts that would apply to these funds.
7.  Click Save and View Funds.

It’s time to run your Mass Update!

1.  Click on Mass Update
2. Click on Mass Update in the blue bar.
3. When it comes to Mass Updates we have two options to choose from, Update Existing Items on the left and Create New Items on the right. We have to update existing journal entries, so we’ll choose Transaction Values on the left hand side.
4. Select your category and query under Select Query.
5. Choose Assign under Update Type
6. Select General Fund on the Fund drop down menu
7. Click Next to preview your mass update. Make sure the number of journal entries to update is correct and matches your query.
8. Click Next to run the Mass Update.

There you have it! All those donations are now updated with your new fund. You probably want to disable those two funds, which are no longer going to be used. To disable those funds:

1. Go to Manage.
2. Hover over Defined Fields.
3. Click Funds.
4. Click Enabled under the funds you would like to disable.

For information on the different types of mass updates we can perform, review our help section.

You can keep up with us on Twitter by following @bbsupport; we use the hashtag #bbetap when we discuss eTapestry. Take a look at our Twitter Guide for more information.