Note: Once a donation is made, it is unable to be deleted out of GivingFuel. You can simply use filters to remove any donations from a view or export as needed.
Donation and Transaction Statuses
Abandoned
An Abandoned status will show if a donation has been pending for more than 72 hours. This means the transaction failed to complete and it is now abandoned. An abandoned donation will only pull into the donation report when filtering ALL. Otherwise, these will remain out of reports.
Note: This scenario is rare, but if you see this status, confirm the transaction has failed in your gateway account. If so, have the donor try to donate again.
Authorized
An Authorized status means the transaction has been approved by the gateway but not yet billed.
Chargeback
A Chargeback status means a transaction has been disputed by the cardholder. Chargebacks occur for a variety of reasons. For example, the cardholder may not have recognized the donation on their bank statement. You generally have the opportunity to contest or concede the chargeback. If you decide to contest the chargeback, you will need to supply specific evidence based on the chargeback type.
Completed
An order with a Completed status means it was submitted successfully. If it had a credit card donation associated to it, their card would have been successfully charged and submitted.
NOTE: For any ACH donations, the system always applies a Completed status to donations because it is assumed that a donation was 'automatically' cleared. So ACH donations will always by default be given a Completed status. We recommend periodically checking your payment processor to ensure that such donations have been completing as expected. As sometimes ACH donations can fail due to insufficient funds, etc, yet our system is always given the status of Completed.
If an ACH donation does not go through, this article will walk you through how to update the donation status in GivingFuel.
Declined
A Declined status means the form of payment was not approved by the payment provider. Some common reasons would be that the information (zip code, province, CVV, etc) was mistyped, there are insufficient funds in the bank account, or the transaction was denied by the bank. This article walks through how to look up why the donation was declined.
NOTE: A declined one-time donation cannot be deleted or re-run. It is best to have the one-time donor attempt a new donation and confirm that all of their details are correct.
Declined recurring donations will attempt to process two additional times. Once two days after the decline and four days after the decline. GivingFuel will email the donor upon each decline with instructions and a link to update their billing details. This link expires after 72 hours.
After the credit card is declined a total of three times, the system will then attempt to run the card again next month. It will repeat the same pattern, attempting to run the card every other day for another three attempts. If the donor still does not update their card by the time the time the 6th attempt is made, the recurring donation will be permanently disabled. A new recurring donation would then need to be established through in order to start giving again.
Error
A transaction with a status of Error means the payment failed due to an error outside of the payment gateway. If you see this, please screenshot it and contact support to assist you.
Gateway Error
A Gateway Error means the payment failed, and is most likely caused by the payment processor's connection. It is possible (but not likely) that the payment is still pending or accepted on the gateway side. If you see this error, first login to check the status of your gateway. If needed, our support team can assist you in addressing the error.
Processing
A status of Processing means a transaction has been created and is in the process of sending to your gateway.
Pending
If a donation is Pending, it means the card failed to run. The donation was submitted but not completed due to a transactional error. A donation will stay pending for up to 24 hours then go to Abandoned.
Note: To find the cause of the transactional error, check the transactional status.
Pending Offline
The donation was successful but cash or check payment is still owed. Once you've received payment, you can change this status to Completed. This means a cash/check payment is en route to you. This will not pull into your reporting or count towards your numbers until you mark the donation as received. Once you have the money, you can mark the donation as received. This article walks through how to do this.
Voided
A Voided status means the payment was cancelled. If the payment is voided before funds have settled (typically a 24 hour process), then no processing will take place. If the payment is voided after it has settled, then the funds will be processed and refunded.