Metadata fields are really useful if you are a large organization that needs to map your transaction data to very specific internal references. This is most useful for accounting systems. If you are an organization with lots of departments, locations, staff, and event types, and need to track all that internally but don't know how to read on because this feature is for you.
Warning: If you are not an organization with lots of departments, locations, staff, and event types and need to track that information internally, we do not recommend using this feature.
Note: Metadata is designed to track transaction data. If you wish to track data regarding the order, registrant or ticket, you can do so by adding an invisible text field with default values set. Here is a tutorial of how people use pre-fill URL's to populate invisible fields.
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Example Use Case
To understand the usefulness of Metadata fields, let's imagine you are a large organization that puts on different kinds of events around the country. You might have different types of events, different kinds of venues, and different ways you need to account for your revenue. Internally, you might have an internal reference code or general ledger for each city, each location, and event type. Metadata helps you track all this.
In our example, let's imagine your internal reporting keeps track of workshops with an internal reporting reference of "500-100", but conferences have an internal reference of "300-500". Perhaps your account for event revenue internally with an internal reference called "Event_income" which helps you account for it separately from other organization income. Last, let's say you currently track the west coast as a region with a reference of "W.coast", but east coast events you track with a reference of "E.coast".
Those are just made-up examples, but the point is that you need to map a certain transaction to multiple specific codes internally.
Okay, so now let's say you are planning a conference in Los Angeles and your internal team wants to know how to account for the financial revenue according to these three types.
Your challenge is to get the event type id (300-500), the income category (Event_income), and the region (W.coast) all in your financial exports. Hello, Metadata fields! That is what this option does.
Each metadata field has a key (think label) and then a value. You can enter a metadata field for each location, type, and also revenue type. Here is how this would look given our examples above.
Get Started
From the Pages screen, click the pencil icon on the page you'd like to add metadata field to
Hover your mouse over the Settings tab in the to menu bar
Select Basic Setup from the dropdown
Scroll down to Metadata
Add Your Metadata Options
Enter in your Key and Value
Click +Add to add additional Meta data options
You can click the trash can next to any of the metadata options to delete it
Reporting
With these settings in place, now your transaction data will carry these nerdy settings down to your Donations Report, Original Donation Data Report, and Transaction Reports.
Notice in your Donations report, you will now see Metadata. Choose this to add it to your exports. When this is added, all your transactions associated with that page will now have your specified metadata fields exported with each transaction.
Here is how the metadata field looks in the actual export file according to our above example. Only really large organizations generally need this. It can be super helpful for people who are tracking their revenue in multiple simultaneous ways.
