GivingFuel offers a few different ways to test your giving page depending on your needs and preferences. Testing is an important process to make sure everything is working just as you'd expect, and allows you to review the entire donor and admin experience.
This guide will walk you through each way you can test and why each one might be useful.
Preview Mode will not allow you to save data, but will allow you to text the donation experience
Testing on a Tester Payment Processor will allow you to both test the donation experience as well as reporting, exporting, editing donations, integrations, etc
Testing on a Real Payment Processor will allow you to do all of the above, as well as ensure your processor is successfully accepting transactions
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Test in Preview Mode
Overview
The Preview Mode can be found on your GivingFuel page, and launches a test page in a new tab and places a red border around the page letting you know that the page is for testing only
The preview mode is best for testing the visual and communication experience of your donation page including the donation experience, confirmation page, and confirmation email
NOTE: Preview mode will not process real cards nor issue real donations, so no data will be saved to your account when using preview mode. No reports will be generated from orders placed through Preview mode.
How to Use Preview Mode
On the Pages tab in the top menu bar, click the pencil icon on the page you'd like to test
Click Save on your Donation page
Select the Preview button in the top right corner
Warning: Because the Preview mode is only used for testing, do not share this URL with donors. This link will not accept real donations.
Test With a Test Payment Processor
Note: The Test Payment Processor is only available to GivingFuel customers who are on the Pro and Enterprise Plan.
Overview
The Tester payment processor allows users to add a fake payment processor that accepts certain test credit card numbers
The Tester payment processor best used for testing the exports, reporting, analytics, donation management, and integrations without spending real money
Use Case: The Tester payment processor is best when deep and extensive testing is needed. For example, if you are setting up an integration through Zapier, you will want to test certain workflows and review how the data flows to those services. Since Preview mode does not work for this and you won't want to pay real money, the Tester Payment processor is an excellent use.
When using a tester payment processor, all exports, reports, and analytics will work with the exception of Payout Summaries and Payout Reports because there was no real funds being processed.
Warning on Test Data:
Be advised that data captured and processed with the Tester payment processor is just like real transactions and cannot be deleted.
Most commonly, when customers are done testing, they will clone the page and then add their real payment processor to the new page (and archive the old page linked to the Tester payment processor). This will also archive the data and allow you to start fresh on the new page with no test data cluttering up your reporting.
Add a Test Payment Processor
Hover your mouse over the gear icon in the right-hand side of the top menu bar
Select Payment Processors from the dropdown
Click the Add Payment Processor button
On the Payment Processor dropdown, select the Credit Card dropdown
On the Provider dropdown, select Tester (for Testing Only) from the bottom of the list
The Tester payment processor will ask for Merchant ID and Merchant key. Make up a set of numbers to enter in there such as 11111111
Click the Save button
Publish your page to the Test Payment Processor
On the Pages tab in the top menu bar, click the pencil icon under the page you want to test
Click the Publish button
Select a Tester payment processor from the Select Payment Method dropdown
To use the Test payment processor, go to the Published page and submit fake information to the page. When you place a donation, enter one of the following dummy credit card numbers, enter an expiration date in the future, and make up the CVV number
Tester Visa Card number: 4111-1111-1111-1111
Tester American Express number: 3782-8224-6310-005
Tester Mastercard number: 5555-5555-5555-4444
Test With a Real Payment Processor
Overview
Testing with a real payment processor and entering a real credit card ensures that your payment processor is accepting and processing credit cards as expected.
Testing with a real credit card should be reserved primarily for testing the payment processor, and is not useful for repetitive testing
NOTE: Many credit card processors may flag your account as fraud if they see the person who setup the payment processor running transactions through it.
We would recommend:
Being sure to cancel and refund yourself before the transaction is included in your payout, because the paying of yourself can be seen as money laundering.
Or, see if you can use someone else's credit card to perform the tests to avoid this. You can always cancel and refund the transaction later.
Testing with a real credit card will issue real donations, all data will be saved, and reports and analytics will all be generated with the donation. You cannot delete this data or tests, but you can cancel the donations or archive the page. Testing with real credit cards should be reserved primarily for testing the payment processor. If you test your own credit card too many times, your own bank may flag your activity as suspicious and lock your card.
FAQs
Can I edit my page after I've published it?
Yes, you can edit your page after you've published it. We strongly discourage users from deleting any fields once you've started accepting donations to ensure that you don't lose any data. Instead of deleting a field, we recommend creating an action to hide a field.
What happens if someone tries to place an order with a real credit card when my page is published to a tester payment processor?
If someone tries to use a real credit card on a page linked to a tester payment processor, the order will be declined and they will receive this error message:
