The 'Dollar Input' Element and 'Tally' Options for Organizations Explained

If you process donation requests, financial support or requests for in kind goods or services, the 'Dollar Input' element and 'Tally' property will be vital for tracking total giving for your program. 

Quick Links: 

• Introduction
• Tally Fields
• Requires Confirmation

NOTE: The Dollar Input and other tally fields are advanced elements that may someday be included as part of a paid package for foundations and other similarly well funded entities that distribute money to others. There will always be a free version of Do Some Good for organizations and we will never delete, limit your usage of, or charge you for existing forms even if some features you use become part of a paid package at a later date. 

Introduction

If you are running any sort of grant or sponsorship request program or if you provide financial assistance to clients, you frequently ask the applicant for the amount of money they are requesting from your program. You may also want to ask questions about the organization itself such as annual budget or their income from other sources. These questions however should be treated very differently; one type is a request for you to pay out money or in-kind products or services, the other is just for your information to help with decision making. In addition, if you are granting money or property to someone, you want to make very sure you are granting the correct amount. The remainder of this article tells you how to use the 'Tally' and 'Requires Confirmation' properties to do exactly that.

Tally Fields

Whenever you drag a new 'Dollar Input' element onto a form, by default it has the advanced property to 'Include in tally for $ requested'. That means that the value entered in each Tally field in the submission will contribute to totals in two key ways:

• Contribute to the Requested and Paid columns on your Forms page. 
• Contribute to Requested and Paid amounts in your forms summary reports. 
• Contribute to the 'Total Amounts' area on each submission Details page. 

• If changed to 'Include in tally for in-kind $', it works in the exact same way but rather than contributing to a Monetary total, in contributes to an In-Kind total. You can include both types of Tally fields on your form. 

Requires Confirmation On State Change

By default, a new 'Dollar Input' element will also have 'Requires confirmation on state change' selected. This means that the value will be displayed on and optionally be edited and adjusted by your administrators during the review and approval process. When changing to an approved state, the values requiring confirmation (original and updated value) will be displayed to you. When included in reports, two columns will be available for this field. One for the original request amount and one for the amount at the time the report is run. 

The bottom line is, if you are asking an applicant how much they want from your organization, whether it is a cash or in-kind donation, you should have the default Tally and Requires confirmation on state change option selected. If you are asking about budgets, goals, income or any other value that will not be given by your business, then these properties should not be selected.