Tag Archives: United Kingdom

Latest IDLookup Release

Not Code, , , ,

Zeidman Development are excited to announce the release of IDLookup 2.0.

It has been totally rewritten to give it a new look and feel but that is the least of it. The new version includes:

  • Instead of just one set of criteria you can have many. The plug-in will try to match against each criteria set until it finds either a unique match or the match with the fewest multiples. Save your criteria sets for later use.
  • Review multiple matches more easily. The multiples are now cross referenced to another worksheet in Excel so you can see the values from Raiser’s Edge and compare them to values in the file
  • Match last or organisation name on aliases
  • Match on date of birth.
  • Address equivalents are now customizable from within IDLookup in a new easier to use interface
  • User interface is localized for UK, US and for Canadian English language

And what is more Zeidman Development is keeping its pledge and making this latest upgrade to our existing users absolutely free.

Read more here

IDLookup – A new version

Beginner, ,

I am pleased to announce the release of IDLookup version 1.1.5. This is just an incremental upgrade with the small additions of support for searching by title and by gender.

As always if you already own a copy of IDLookup then follow this link to download the new version. Use the same serial number if prompted.

If you do not own a copy then why not download a trial version at Zeidman Development. And now for a limited time only (thanks to Her Majesty’s government) UK buyers can get the reduced VAT rate! If you are buying from outside of the UK then take advantage of the low exchange rate. Due to the exchange rate the US dollar equivalent price is now 27% lower than it was four weeks ago!

The Full Address

Beginner, ,

I wanted to be able to get a constituent’s address from their record. Sounds simple enough. You just take the address block, the city, the state and zip. Although what happens if they are not in the States or Canada. When you change the country for example, to United Kingdom, the state field disappears and a county field appears in its place. Pulling the state field would just be a blank value.

Continue reading The Full Address →

Adjust that tax claim at your peril

Beginner, , , , , , , , ,

This is perhaps more of a rant than anything else but after being so pleased with the way Blackbaud introduced Batch into the RE:API I now found myself stuck with another piece of Raiser’s Edge functionality that I am less than pleased with.In the UK Gift Aid is big business. In the States (and possibly elsewhere) the donor can claim tax back from charitable donations. In the UK it is the charity that can claim the money back from the government for UK tax payers so this can amount to a very large sum of money if it is handled properly. There have been several changes to Gift Aid over the past four or five versions of Raiser’s Edge. One problem that was not addressed until recently was when Gift Aid had been taken in error and then claimed back from the Inland Revenue. If a gift was given in error then the Gift must be adjusted or written off and the Gift Aid must be reversed. If the Gift Aid was claimed in error (for example the donor was not a tax payer) then the Gift Aid alone must be reversed.
Continue reading Adjust that tax claim at your peril →

How I would improve the API

Not Code, , , , , , , , , , ,

If I have often wondered if I were in charge of the API at Blackbaud how I would change it. Well unfortunately I don’t wield that kind of power and secondly I am not sure that a major overhaul is required. It is clearly not a modern API being COM based but for the main it works well. However there are still quite a few areas that I would improve upon. I don’t suppose that these will ever happen. Changing the API is no doubt lower on Blackbaud’s list of priorities. With the imminent arrival of the Infinity platform (and, yes, its name does seem to have influenced the pace at which it is being released) , the ability to develop any interface into the system seems a real possibility. RE API by comparison appears somewhat staid and limited. I would imagine it no longer commands the attention at Blackbaud those of us using it would like.

That being said I would love to be proven wrong so Blackbaud if you are listening here are the areas that I would change: Continue reading How I would improve the API →