Most Common User Questions From Greater Giving Clients—Answered!
At Greater Giving, we offer free technical help to our users from day one. We love that we get to be your first line of support, so we can be a part of your success.
To help you get off on the right foot, we sought out the most common user questions, and compiled our support team’s collective knowledge to answer them.
Event Night Solutions & Credit Card Payments
Do Guests have to Check Out?
Answer: Using GoTime Guests can skip the Check Out Line
Go Time is an interface in our online software designed to manage your event check-in and registration, sales entry, and checkout. Go Time is user-friendly, intuitive, and easy for volunteers and staff to learn.
What is the card reader?
Answer: Greater Giving is able to provide two types of card readers to clients depending on if they are using a USB device or a mobile device
The card reader is a simple USB device that links directly with our software to capture and store bidder payment information at your event. The card readers can be used with both online event software solutions, but do require a computer at registration.
The mobile card reader is the tablet equivalent of our card reader device, allowing you to accept payments at your event on the go. It plugs into the audio port on an iPad. With the help of our free app, and access to the Internet, the mobile card reader connects to Go Time to help you run your event.
Online Bidding
Can I open up Online Bidding prior to the event?
Answer: Absolutely!
One of the benefits of Mobile Bidding is that you can open bidding before the live event, to help drum up excitement and enthusiasm for the auction. Your online auction can be kept open after the event too. Making the auction even more flexible especially for item pickup and so on.
Can I open the bidding to people who can’t attend the event?
Answer: YES! You can set up your auction to share publicly on your website or social media to increase the number of bidders.
Another huge benefit of Mobile Bidding is allowing both guests who are present at the event, and those who are not present, to participate in the auction. This document on Remote Bidders will walk you through how to open your auction to non-attending guests.
Event Software and Online Payments
I’m having trouble logging in to my event software. What should I do?
Answer: Use the Forgot Password Link
If you receive an error while attempting to log in to Greater Giving Online, double-check that you are entering your email and password correctly. If you’ve forgotten one or the other, just click the Forgot Password link, and the software will walk you through resetting your password.
How Do I collect guest info ahead of time?
Answer: Greater Giving’s RSVP Feature
The RSVP Dashboard is a central location for all of your admissions within your project. It’s a place to get quick stats related to admissions, and to identify which sales are not fully allocated. The RSVP dashboard help you when collecting guest information online after the initial purchase has been made, and it can be used for all sales, regardless of sale source. Creating an RSVP Page is the first step to accepting RSVPs for manually added Sales. Once your RSVP page is created you can create RSVP links for your guests.
How Many Users Can I Have?
Answer: With Greater Giving you can create as many users as you need and can control their access to their permissions.
You can add, remove, or update users with various options in your organization as long as you have the Manage Users and Permissions setting on your user permissions settings. User Permissions determine what a user can access and edit in projects across the organizations account. We recommend having at least 2 users with full Administrator access. To manage user permissions you can select edit to adjust access for other users like volunteers.
Accounting
How do I submit a refund?
Answer: To issue a credit card refund to any of your supporters, please visit Accounting.
You’ll find four options for refunds. Simply select how the credit card was originally processed—card reader, or a transaction through your Online Payments website—and fill out the form.
Most clients can process refunds directly within the software, which creates the record of the refund in the process.
How do I reconcile a deposit statement?
Answer: Follow a few simple steps for reconciling statements
First, log in to your Greater Giving Online Payments account. If you’re not sure where to log in, just check the Welcome Email you received when you signed up with Greater Giving.
Next, go to Run a Report, and select Settled Transactions. Enter the date range for the deposit statement and then run a Basic Report. You’ll see a list of itemized transactions that make up your deposit statement. Our Help Center has more information on the steps to reconcile statements.
We hope we could answer some of your questions, and be sure to bookmark this page for later! If you have other specific questions you can chat with support or contact Greater Giving Client Services Monday – Friday 6:30am – 4:00pm PST at (866) 269-8151
Have any more questions? Add them to the comments section!
Readers also liked:
How long do you keep credit card copies? We have them on a spreadsheet for future reference but was not sure on the retention for credit card copies and check copies.
Thank you.!
It is recommended to keep signed encrypted receipts for 1-2 years in a secure location; however it is highly recommended to never store donor’s credit card information on a spreadsheet for any period of time.
If you have more specific questions about this topic, please reach out to Greater Giving Client Services via Chat, phone (866) 269-8151, or email support@greatergiving.com.
Thank you!
How do you send an email blast to previous attendees? Is it only accessible for users at specific admin levels?
Please call or email asap.
Could not find helpful, step-by-step, instructions on your website.
Thank you!
Margo – 512-751-5210
Hi Margo, thanks for the question. We went ahead and contacted our support department for you and they should be reaching out shortly. For future questions, don’t hesitate to reach out directly by phone 866-269-8151, or email support@greatergiving.com.
Is it best practice to upload all of our area donors as supporters for an upcoming event even if they have not confirmed attendance? I understand I can assign supporters as bidders night of the event but is it common practice to import all potential attendees. I don’t want to add too much extra data to the dashboard but curious as to what’s recommended.
Thanks for the question Shakira. Typically we say yes, because it helps builds your donor/supporter database, eliminates the need to re-enter data from year to year and builds a history for reporting/analytical purposes.
You are correct, you can mark them as active each year based on attendance, sales, donations etc. Thanks again, hope that helps!
Is it possible to sort items by solicitor so we can pull a list of what our procurement team did last year?
I will be traveling out of the county the day after we put tickets up for sale. What do I do once I get a ticket registration? (I need to know if I need to train someone or if it is something I can handle 5 days later when I am back in the country).
Hi Anne,
While you do have to import each registration into the software, it does not require immediate attention and can hold off the 5 days while you are away. However, we do recommend you give yourself as much time before your event to perform the import i.e., night before your event is not a good idea. If you should have any further questions, feel free to reach out to us directly at Client Services (866) 269-8151 or https://online.help.greatergiving.com/hc/en-us.
And enjoy your vacation!
I would like to use font styles that match our event promotional material on the website. Is there a way to add font styles for use? I have three font families that I would like to add.
Thank you!
Thanks for the question Sarah. Most of our pages have a predefined font list. You do, however, have the option of using HTML for further customization. Feel free to reach out to our support team for further assistance Phone (866) 269-8151, Email support@greatergiving.com. Thanks again for reaching out!
Can Go Time and card readers be used for multiple days over the course of a single project? For example, if our school is soliciting donations ahead of time for an event, can we use a card reader and Go Time at several different locations before the actual event? The people we are asking for donations from are less likely to go to the event website, but if we are asking in-person we’d like to have card readers available. Thank you!
We have quit a few repeat items each year. Is there a way to copy items from last years event to this years items?
Hi Ray, thanks for the question. Yes absolutely you can copy items over. Here are a few articles that discuss on how to do that.
https://greatergivinghelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021737214-Copying-Items-from-a-Previous-Project
https://greatergivinghelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021732094-Creating-a-Project-Using-a-Past-Project
If you should have any further questions, feel free to reach out: Phone (866) 269-8151 or Email support@greatergiving.com
If a text is sent out to attendees, do they have the ability to reply or opt out of text messaging? We are planning to send out a host of messages to donors for a virtual event who have shared their number with us, but want to ensure that they have the ability to opt out if they wish.
Hi Sarah, attendees do have the ability to opt out of text messages, but they do not have the ability to reply. Hope that helps!
I need to run a report with all our supporters who have either donated or purchased from our projects. What I need to know is how to get the results to exclude the archived supporters. The chat has been very helpful with running the reports but they all include the archived supporters. Please help!! Thank you
Hi Shyla,
Can you give us a call so we can discuss the options? -Phone (866) 269-8151 or Email support@greatergiving.com. Thanks again for reaching out!