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.
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Testing with 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
Testing With a Real Payment Processor
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: 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 orders or archive the page
Tip: A tip to test with a real payment processor is to make a low-value donation on your page.
After testing with a real credit card, you can go and cancel the order and issue yourself a refund. It is recommended you cancel and refund immediately after your test so that your test money does not end up being part of your payout. If you allow your own test credit card charge to be paid out in your direct deposit, credit card companies will likely flag you as fraudulent use for paying yourself.
Warning: If you test your own credit card too many times, your own bank may flag your activity as suspicious and lock your card.
Testing With a Test Payment Processor
The Tester payment processor allows users to add a fake payment processor that accepts certain test credit card numbers
Use Case: The Tester payment processor best used for testing the exports, reporting, analytics, donation management, and integrations without spending real money. The Payout Summary and Payout Reports will not populate from Test Payment Processors since there were not real funds being processed
Important (!) - Data collected when using a tester payment processor cannot be deleted. It is strongly advised you copy the page and use the tester gateway on a completely separate page so you do not have any test data on your live page. After testing, you can delete the tester page.
Note: The Test Payment Processor is only available to GivingFuel customers who are on the Pro and Enterprise Plan.
Adding 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 the newly added Tester payment processor from the Select Payment Method dropdown
Using a Test Payment Processor
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
FAQ's
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:
