Blog posts
Product Updates
Product Updates
Product Update - September 2023
David Simpson
September 1, 2023
You can now set up automated imports for manual payments in Stripe. This is really useful if you want to set up a payment or subscription by typing a donor's card details directly into the Stripe dashboard. This type of payment is often referred to as "Mail Order and Telephone Orders" (MOTO). This method bypasses Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and the donor will not need to authenticate the payment via their banking app. Stripe charges higher transaction fees for processing these payments. You can find out more here.
When a payment or subscription is created manually in Stripe, you can instruct Beacon to create subscription, payment, and person records. This is really handy when collecting payments over the phone, because you only need to enter the information in Stripe to process the payment, Beacon will be updated automatically.
You can turn on this functionality, and configure any fixed data that you would like to set on the records created by stripe, from the Payments section in your Beacon settings.
This feature is so new that we haven't written the documentation for it yet! Once we've published an update to our guide I'll include a link to the documentation here.
If you have a signup form which creates related records, you can now use the fields from these records in email notifications and acknowledgements. This is especially useful if you have a form which creates a custom record type and you want to provide a summary of that new record in the acknowledgement email.
Including the option to give an additional donation when completing a membership or ticketing form is a great way to drive extra revenue. To give new members and event attendees an extra nudge there is now an option to have the 'Include an additional donation?' option toggled on when the form loads. The user will need to click the toggle button if they do not wish to leave an additional donation.
We've introduced a new system which makes it way easier to trial Beacon features. You can get in touch with our delightful customer success team and request a trial of any element and they can have you set up in no time flat. Got an event coming up and want to take Beacon's ticketing system for a spin? Growing your team and you want to try out Roles and Permissions? It's never been simpler to try before you buy.
If you're new to Beacon and you're looking to really get to grips with your CRM then you can enrol in one of our free online courses through Beacon Lighthouse. We've got General training courses plus Deep Dive courses on Major Gifts & Grants, Events & Ticketing and Gift Aid, all curated by Senior Customer Success Manager and Lighthouse Keeper, Luke.
We run a variety of events to help you to get the most out of Beacon, including regular clinics, deep dives into specific features, and in-person meetups. We've also got recordings of previous events so you'll never miss something useful. You can find everything listed on the Beacon events page.
Beacon customers are invited to join our private Facebook Group. It's a place to exchange ideas, tips, and best practices.
You can find the group here and we'd love to welcome you in.
The group is only available to Beacon customers.
We're improving how Beacon manages campaigns, upgrading our JustGiving integration to bring in your data faster, and making improvements to our Zapier integration.
