As a member of your church’s Finance Team, you can import a .csv file of previous gifts from the Gifts menu.
Note: If you’re moving from a previous giving platform, you can import recurring gifts from your previous giving platform and then send a customized email series to givers, prompting them to provide a payment method in Faithlife Giving. Learn more.
1. Prepare your .csv file
Start by exporting your gifts from your previous platform. Faithlife can interpret .csv data from most giving platforms, but taking a few minutes to prepare your exported .csv file will make a cleaner import process. Here are a few general rules to follow:
- Provide a header row for each column if your export doesn’t include it automatically. The title should be descriptive of the column content.
- Ensure each column contains only one piece of data (e.g., fund, amount, etc.), with the exception of name which can either be formatted as a first name column and a last name column or full name in one column.
- If possible, always include an email address for each gift, as Faithlife uses email addresses to link imported gifts to existing givers. (See the note below for more details.)
- You can only import 10,000 gifts per CSV file, so if you have more than 10,000 gifts to import, you'll need to divide them into multiple batches.
- We’ve created a sample .csv with all available field names for import. For best results, use this file to structure your .csv
Note: The import tool uses email addresses to link imported gifts to existing givers. In other words, records in your imported CSV file with an email address that matches the email of an existing person record will apply the imported gift data to that person record. If an email address is not provided in the CSV import or the provided email address does not match an existing person record, a new person record will be created. Additionally, if multiple gifts within the imported file share the same name, email, and physical address, Faithlife will merge this giving data under a single new person record (assuming the email does not match an existing person record). After importing giving data, you can merge duplicate records if the import process results in duplicate records for the same person.
2. Open the Gifts menu.
Go to Faithlife.com, sign in, and select your Finance Team from the Groups Panel. Click on the Gifts tab in your Finance Team.
Note: You can also open your Finance Team from the Teams Panel of your parent church group.
3. Upload your .csv file.
Click Add and choose Import gifts (.csv).
Select a file on your computer and click Open.
4. Finalize the import.
The import process will show three columns:
- File Header: the names for each column in your .csv file.
- Sample File Values: the column data for imported data
- Gift Field: the suggested import field for the gift
Scan through each gift field to ensure it matches the data from your import. Any field not mapped to a Gift Field will be skipped on import, so ensure all crucial data is mapped to a field.
Note: If your .csv file includes the givers' full names in one column (rather than separate first and last name columns), you may initially see an error message upon import which states that you must have a valid first name and last name. However, once you select Full Name as the Gift Field for your full name column, these errors will be resolved.
Note: You can also upload a new .csv file or re-import the file if there was an error by clicking Re-upload CSV.
Once you’ve finished mapping the data to the gift fields, click Import gifts. Before clicking, confirm the number of gifts shown reflects the number of gifts in your file.
Once Faithlife imports the .csv, an indicator will show. Click it to view the imported gifts in a report. Gifts imported from a .csv will read File Import in the Source column of your giving reports.
Pro Tip: You can filter gifts based on a prior import file on the Gifts tab in the Show dropdown.
Deleting Imports
If you need to delete imported gifts, you can either remove individual gifts or delete an entire import.
