The revenue pipeline is the ensemble of all future revenue opportunities that are currently being pursued at Tides Canada Foundation and tracked as opportunities in Salesforce.  The donations pipeline is tool that allows us to forecast future revenue, make strategic decisions, and drive activity that will sustain and grow our revenue stream.

To maintain an accurate and effective donations pipeline, specific opportunity fields and key related records must be kept updated to reflect the latest information and interactions with a donor. These are described in detail in the following section.

Each Opportunity Lead is responsible for keeping their own pipeline of opportunities up to date on an ongoing basis.

The Senior TCF Coordinator will undertake a quarterly process in consultation with Opportunity Leads and Development Leads to ensure the ongoing accuracy of the pipeline by:

• Reviewing and updating all open opportunities to ensure they are accurate
• Identifying and entering renewals of opportunities received in the previous quarter

d)  Payments

Payments represent the individual transaction(s) through which the opportunity is expected to fulfilled by the donor. Payments represent cash revenue to Tides Canada. 

A single opportunity may have one or many payments. The process for managing payments varies based on whether an opportunity is expected to be fulfilled in a single payment or in multiple payments:

i.  Managing single-payment opportunities

Single payments are managed automatically and require no special action from the user. The following automations apply to single-payment opportunities:

1. When an opportunity is created and the Do Not Automatically Create Payment field is not checked off:
   • A single payment is created for the opportunity
   • Payment Amount field on payment is set to the opportunity Amount
   • Scheduled Date field on payment is set to opportunity Close Date.
2. When Amount or Close Date fields on an opportunity with a single payment are subsequently updated:
   • Payment Amount field on payment is updated to the new opportunity Amount
   • Scheduled Date field on payment is updated to the new opportunity Close Date

2.  Scheduling multiple payments

For gifts that are expected to be received in multiple installments, payment schedule must be created and maintained manually. For example, if a proposal requests a contribution to be paid in two more installments, this should be reflected in the payment schedule.

Use the Schedule Payments tool to create or update the payment schedule:

1. Open the opportunity for which you would like to create a payments schedule.
2. Check if the opportunity has any existing unpaid payments by scrolling down to the “Payments” related list.
   • If no unpaid payments exist, for example, because the Do Not Automatically Create Payment field was checked off, then you are ready to move on the next step.
   • If one or more unpaid payments already exist, delete them by pressing the Delete All Unpaid Payments button on the opportunity.
3. Press the Schedule Payments button above the “Payments” related list
4. Ensure the fields in the “Create a Payment Schedule” section are set as follows
   • # of Payments: the number of installments in which the opportunity is expected to be paid
   • Date of First Payment: the date that the first payment is expected to be received. The date of all subsequent payments will be calculated relative to this date.
   • Interval: the time interval between installments. Choose “1 Year” for opportunities to be paid in annual installments.
   • Payment Method: the payment method we expect the donor to use. Normally leave this blank unless the donor has specifically told us how they plan to play.
5.  Press Calculate Payments button. A draft payment schedule will be automatically generated in the “Payments to be Created” section.
6. For each payment to be created, manually update the following fields:
   • Payment Amount: Set to the expected amount of each payment.  By default, the total opportunity Amount is by divided equally between each payment. For opportunities paid in unequal payments, the payment amount for each payment should be set manually.
   • Schedule Date: Set to the date that each payment is expected to be received. By default, this is set based on the Date of First Payment and Interval defined above.
   • Payment Date: Leave blank. This is set when the payment is received during gift processing.
   • Paid: Leave unchecked. This is set when the payment is received during gift processing.
7. Press Create Payments
   • Note: If you see the below error at the top of the screen, return to step (2) and ensure that you delete any existing unpaid payments.