The team established a plan to test n8n automation between Donor Box and Airtable as an alternative to the unstable Zapier connection. The upcoming donation campaign (launching within 1-2 weeks) will serve as a pilot for this improved workflow, with results informing broader CRM system decisions.
[technology="Communication Automations"]
Marlene explained that the existing donation receipt system in Airtable was built but never fully operational due to Zapier connection failures (00:38). The system includes templates for both single and compiled yearly donation receipts, with formatting designed by Johanna to meet German tax authority requirements including mandatory postal addresses and organization identification numbers (30:14).
Reinold identified that most donations flow through Stripe regardless of payment method (PayPal, credit card, or bank transfer), meaning transaction data is already centralized in the Stripe dashboard with donor metadata (13:52). However, approximately 30 people donate via direct bank transfer outside of Donor Box, requiring manual processing (25:32).
James confirmed he's close to completing the Donor Box webhook integration with n8n (49:41). His approach involves creating one comprehensive workflow with multiple inputs and outputs rather than separate automations for each process. This unified workflow would:
The system will automatically create campaigns in Airtable when new campaigns are launched in Donor Box, with donations automatically linked to the appropriate campaign (52:08).
The existing Airtable setup includes document builder extensions with templates for various receipt types. Peter noted that if Zapier data was accurate historically, using Airtable's receipt generation should work reliably (42:23). He offered to show Reinold how to use the Airtable extension, noting that Sophie has successfully used it for invoices previously (42:57).
Donor Box natively generates receipts, but these don't meet German legal requirements. James confirmed the system allows customization of receipt content and supports multiple languages (22:41). The team discussed that Maria has manually added bank transfer donations to Donor Box campaigns for tracking purposes, suggesting this approach could provide a complete donation overview (28:32).
Reinold emphasized the overarching goal of reducing system complexity (45:56). The team is evaluating Odoo and Fibu as potential CRM solutions, but lacks practical experience to inform the decision.
Marlene explained her approach: testing the Airtable automation workflow with real donation data will provide concrete evidence of whether Airtable can serve as a viable CRM foundation or if a dedicated system is necessary (47:02). She acknowledged different decision-making styles, noting she needs hands-on experience with systems rather than just vendor presentations (47:38).
The team agreed that successful automation of donation receipts through Airtable could validate keeping it as part of the stack, while failure would support moving to a more integrated CRM solution.
Donation receipts must include:
Only German residents require these receipts (approximately 80-100 people annually), as international donors cannot use German donation receipts for tax purposes (23:52). This localized requirement influences the decision to potentially maintain separate automated processes for different donor segments.
The pilot will launch with the upcoming donation campaign starting this week or next (37:31). James committed to completing the n8n setup immediately after the meeting and notifying the team when testing can begin (51:49).
Marlene will provide campaign details once created in Donor Box, triggering the automated Airtable campaign creation. Peter and Sophie will support testing the receipt generation process and identifying any gaps in the existing templates (54:05).
The team acknowledged that if the process requires significant setup time (more than approximately six hours), it contradicts the simplification goals and would support moving to a dedicated CRM system (46:02).
Reinold raised concerns about whether automatically including event ticket purchases in yearly donation receipts is appropriate, with Marlene confirming only donations should appear (34:45). The team needs to verify proper transaction categorization in the data flow.
The extent of manual intervention required for bank transfer donations remains to be determined—whether these should be manually entered into Donor Box or processed through a separate workflow.
James
Marlene
Reinold & Marlene
Peter
The team established a plan to test n8n automation between Donor Box and Airtable as an alternative to the unstable Zapier connection. The upcoming donation campaign (launching within 1-2 weeks) will serve as a pilot for this improved workflow, with results informing broader CRM system decisions.
[technology="Communication Automations"]
Marlene explained that the existing donation receipt system in Airtable was built but never fully operational due to Zapier connection failures (00:38). The system includes templates for both single and compiled yearly donation receipts, with formatting designed by Johanna to meet German tax authority requirements including mandatory postal addresses and organization identification numbers (30:14).
Reinold identified that most donations flow through Stripe regardless of payment method (PayPal, credit card, or bank transfer), meaning transaction data is already centralized in the Stripe dashboard with donor metadata (13:52). However, approximately 30 people donate via direct bank transfer outside of Donor Box, requiring manual processing (25:32).
James confirmed he's close to completing the Donor Box webhook integration with n8n (49:41). His approach involves creating one comprehensive workflow with multiple inputs and outputs rather than separate automations for each process. This unified workflow would:
The system will automatically create campaigns in Airtable when new campaigns are launched in Donor Box, with donations automatically linked to the appropriate campaign (52:08).
The existing Airtable setup includes document builder extensions with templates for various receipt types. Peter noted that if Zapier data was accurate historically, using Airtable's receipt generation should work reliably (42:23). He offered to show Reinold how to use the Airtable extension, noting that Sophie has successfully used it for invoices previously (42:57).
Donor Box natively generates receipts, but these don't meet German legal requirements. James confirmed the system allows customization of receipt content and supports multiple languages (22:41). The team discussed that Maria has manually added bank transfer donations to Donor Box campaigns for tracking purposes, suggesting this approach could provide a complete donation overview (28:32).
Reinold emphasized the overarching goal of reducing system complexity (45:56). The team is evaluating Odoo and Fibu as potential CRM solutions, but lacks practical experience to inform the decision.
Marlene explained her approach: testing the Airtable automation workflow with real donation data will provide concrete evidence of whether Airtable can serve as a viable CRM foundation or if a dedicated system is necessary (47:02). She acknowledged different decision-making styles, noting she needs hands-on experience with systems rather than just vendor presentations (47:38).
The team agreed that successful automation of donation receipts through Airtable could validate keeping it as part of the stack, while failure would support moving to a more integrated CRM solution.
Donation receipts must include:
Only German residents require these receipts (approximately 80-100 people annually), as international donors cannot use German donation receipts for tax purposes (23:52). This localized requirement influences the decision to potentially maintain separate automated processes for different donor segments.
The pilot will launch with the upcoming donation campaign starting this week or next (37:31). James committed to completing the n8n setup immediately after the meeting and notifying the team when testing can begin (51:49).
Marlene will provide campaign details once created in Donor Box, triggering the automated Airtable campaign creation. Peter and Sophie will support testing the receipt generation process and identifying any gaps in the existing templates (54:05).
The team acknowledged that if the process requires significant setup time (more than approximately six hours), it contradicts the simplification goals and would support moving to a dedicated CRM system (46:02).
Reinold raised concerns about whether automatically including event ticket purchases in yearly donation receipts is appropriate, with Marlene confirming only donations should appear (34:45). The team needs to verify proper transaction categorization in the data flow.
The extent of manual intervention required for bank transfer donations remains to be determined—whether these should be manually entered into Donor Box or processed through a separate workflow.
James
Marlene
Reinold & Marlene
Peter
00:00:00
James Redenbaugh: Well, they're going up so fast.
00:00:06
Marlene: Very cute. And they're not recognizing this meeting is being recorded. So how far did you get, James, with trying out N8N and donut box?
00:00:28
James Redenbaugh: Good question. So bring this up. One sec. I think I've figured out how to do it and I haven't gotten it fully working yet, but it should work.
00:00:52
Marlene: It.
00:01:31
James Redenbaugh: I've got to re log into everything. Sorry. I just got home from Thanksgiving and I'm logged out of everything.
00:04:02
Marlene: I was just wondering, you had this long Thanksgiving weekend now, right?
00:04:08
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:04:08
Marlene: Yeah. Which we only know from Black Friday. That took over here too.
00:04:18
James Redenbaugh: Oh, really?
00:04:20
Marlene: Yeah. Oh, it's unbelievable. In the last three, four, five years, this really became an issue also here, but only Black Friday, not Thanksgiving.
00:04:30
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, of course, the capitalist part.
00:04:33
Marlene: Yeah, exactly. And I was wondering, Peter, if you are also doing Thanksgiving here?
00:04:40
Peter Harris: Oh, no. I lost connection with that very, very bizarre holiday. I was actually reading about the. All the references to it and where it comes from and.
00:04:56
Marlene: And it's half made up, huh?
00:05:00
Peter Harris: Like half of it was. Does go back to Washington and Lincoln where like the very first instance came from Washington in the 1700s. But then it was some two sentences in a book about a supposed meetup of Indians and pilgrims that was basically turned into a myth of something that never happened. Like it was, huh, the Indians, the Pilgrims came together and they had this big feast. Never happened. It's completely made up. And that's what we grew up with as kids. You know, you. Every Thanksgiving you would make like crafts and stuff with pilgrims and all this. And it was just, it's. It's a totally made up story connected to something that happened that was really like way, way in the past.
00:06:03
Marlene: But could it be that that was taken over from the pilgrims, from the Indians, so that it's somehow like big Christians have holidays which have been not originally Christian holidays.
00:06:20
Peter Harris: I don't think I've ever seen anything about a harvest festivals because that's what it would be. I mean there's harvest festivals.
00:06:30
Marlene: We have that here. Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen any.
00:06:34
Peter Harris: Yeah, I don't think I've seen any reference that I can think of it to Native American harvest festivals.
00:06:45
Marlene: Yeah, it's interesting how things suddenly get this kind of myth. It's. They meet something in people and then it's coming out of itself.
00:06:57
Reinold: To be honest, I do not know really what is Thanksgiving. I heard the expression very often and it's a very famous thing, but don't have an idea what is the Background.
00:07:13
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, base. I mean the story we were told as kids, which isn't really told anymore, was that when the Pilgrims first came, there was tension with the Native Americans and. And then they all had a big feast and everyone was happy.
00:07:29
Peter Harris: Right before 90% were decimated by smallpox and. Right.
00:07:36
Reinold: Was happy. Okay.
00:07:38
Marlene: And that was the last Thursday in November, right?
00:07:42
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:07:43
Peter Harris: And that goes back to Washington. There's a holiday called Thanksgiving that he proclaimed and it was like celebrated once or something and it was all about like, thank God that the. Our new nation didn't fall apart or wasn't destroyed by the evil king. So. So there is some, some real reference to it, but it's been what was combined with that as a feast with the Indians. That, that thing is completely made up.
00:08:17
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, yeah. Now we just have dinner with family and say what we're thankful for and.
00:08:23
Peter Harris: Eat turkey and then go shopping the.
00:08:26
James Redenbaugh: Next day and then go shopping the next day and watch football.
00:08:32
Marlene: But it's even.
00:08:33
Reinold: Is.
00:08:33
Marlene: Is that right? That's even as important for you as Christmas or maybe even more often?
00:08:40
James Redenbaugh: It's pretty similar. Yeah.
00:08:44
Marlene: Yeah, yeah.
00:08:45
James Redenbaugh: Not quite as Christmas because we have to do all the buying and the shopping for Christmas. It's kind of like the start of the Christmas season as well. So everybody starts putting up Christmas decorations right after Thanksgiving if they haven't done so right after Halloween of course start. You start your shopping Black Friday. So it's a whole capitalist.
00:09:17
Marlene: Yeah.
00:09:18
James Redenbaugh: Nightmare. Anyway, I'm back in my everything and. So donor box works via web hooks and I'm trying to get the web hooks to. To trigger an automation. It takes some trial and error to get that working but that. That should work and then we can do whatever we want with from there. And I think we have to decide based on our last meeting what like which tech stacks we want to move forward with.
00:10:10
Marlene: Which text, what which tech.
00:10:13
James Redenbaugh: Stack, which which apps. Because we're last meeting we were talking about so many different possibilities of changing CRM and Zapier and things like that. Airtable. I'm curious, maybe we could start with CRM Rhino. Have you made more headway in digging into those possibilities?
00:10:53
Reinold: We are preparing some tool or we are checked some tools. It's Fibu and it's Odoo which are CRM systems. But I want to go back a step before because in my understanding all or nearly all donors from donor box are paid via stripe. So for. And if this is true then we have all or mostly all donations in tribe and then can we put it to everything we want.
00:11:41
Marlene: Yeah. And what I. What I was bringing up last time was. And we need also donation receipts. And we would like to have a kind of automated process with that.
00:11:56
Reinold: Is it a part of Donor Box? I never look.
00:12:00
Marlene: Yeah, yeah, that's what Donor Box, as far as I remember, Donor Box offers that they can also that there's an automated process that their donation receipts can be produced.
00:12:14
Reinold: So.
00:12:14
Marlene: But that cannot be done by Stripe.
00:12:20
Reinold: That's. That's true. But what we have to decide today or is if we are using Donor Box and sending data to another tool than Stripe, is it. Is it necessary to have it in. In another.
00:12:46
Marlene: No, no, that's not. Okay. What I understood is that if someone pays via Donor Box, the payment goes to Stripe. And by that we know. Okay, that is a donation and we know how to where to put it in the bookkeeping. Yeah.
00:13:08
Reinold: Or is it. No, no, no. Or is it going to Stripe via Zapier? No, no, it's directly connected to Stripe.
00:13:17
Marlene: Okay. I don't know.
00:13:19
Peter Harris: No, I think Donor Box is also using Zapier to capture the data.
00:13:27
James Redenbaugh: Right?
00:13:28
Peter Harris: I mean, to get into airtable. Yes, the. The purchase in Donor Box is in Donor Box. So it uses Stripe to purchase make the payment. But the data of who did what.
00:13:41
Reinold: Is to which Stripe account. I guess to our Stripe account. So then it should be appear in our dashboard. In our Stripe Dashboard.
00:13:52
Peter Harris: Yeah.
00:13:54
Reinold: Who has set it up the Donor Box for Emerge?
00:14:01
Marlene: James.
00:14:03
James Redenbaugh: Didn't I. I guess I did many years ago.
00:14:08
Marlene: Yes, I did. I think so too.
00:14:12
Reinold: Do you know if there the connection to Stripe, if it is used, then we do not in our account. In our Stripe account, then we have the data already. I see that in the dashboard, in the transactions from Stripe, there are transactions which are marked as donations and then they have metadata and with a. Was this their darling.
00:14:51
Peter Harris: The donor?
00:14:52
Reinold: The donor, yes.
00:14:54
James Redenbaugh: Okay.
00:14:55
Reinold: And so then we have already and we do not need it to have it in other things. And the. The question for spending the receipt is then a question of Donor Box. If they can create it.
00:15:15
Marlene: Of Donor Box or a Airtable.
00:15:19
Reinold: Airtable depends on the good function. Well, well, functional Zapier connection. And that's not.
00:15:27
Marlene: Not. Yeah. And that is where I I suggested last time to try that with N8N. Just to play with that and to use N8N. So that that would mean that the donations would go into airtable via N8N. And then there look at the prepared process in Airtable, how to prepare, how to get donor donation receipts out of that. And if that could work.
00:16:02
James Redenbaugh: But.
00:16:03
Reinold: But we have it now. We haven't it now the automatically created.
00:16:08
Marlene: But there was something prepared by Johanna. It's. It was not working, but it was already prepared. The how the donation receipt should look like and things like that.
00:16:20
James Redenbaugh: Okay.
00:16:21
Reinold: The draft.
00:16:23
Marlene: The draft, yeah. And just that we just take that process as a kind of figuring out could. How would that work with N8N. And if that would work very well, we could go the next step and say, okay, maybe we stay with that and we stay with Airtable and now not use Zapier anymore, but use N8N. That was somehow the idea behind this process. Hello.
00:16:56
James Redenbaugh: Hello. So I'm looking in stripe now. And donor box. So we can. So Donor Box does make a suitable. Receipt, including a. Like a compilation receipt.
00:18:18
Marlene: Could you explain that what that means? Okay. Okay.
00:18:24
Reinold: Compilations to some extent.
00:18:26
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:18:27
Marlene: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Then. Yeah.
00:18:32
James Redenbaugh: Because I'm not seeing. Not seeing those in.
00:18:35
Marlene: Would you like. Would you mind to share the screen?
00:18:38
James Redenbaugh: Sure.
00:18:39
Reinold: You're logged into the Donor Box or to Stripe or to what?
00:18:51
James Redenbaugh: So we have receipts here, basic info, recurring donations. People are just basically sent an email receipt and then we have yearly receipt that can be manually sent.
00:19:19
Marlene: So if there would be. Let's see, from Anna Tiger, if she would have. Okay, there would be. That were two donations. Right.
00:19:28
James Redenbaugh: Mm. And I can download this. And I'm just sharing my. Just opening up this PDF. So. Donorbox creates this receipt. We can see that she donated once via PayPal and once via Stripe.
00:20:39
Marlene: And.
00:20:44
James Redenbaugh: Is it a problem that this doesn't include whatever else she might have paid for outside of Donor Box?
00:21:00
Reinold: That may be not the mostly important question because the question is, does this spent this report this fulfill the requirements for the German authorities? Yeah, because it does not. Because we are. We have the special state and there should be a number which represent our. Our company that we are allowed to. To write this.
00:21:40
Marlene: Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:43
James Redenbaugh: So.
00:21:43
Reinold: And this one seems not to be used. This is.
00:21:47
Marlene: No, this was not used. And this is not the right.
00:21:50
Reinold: That's. I can see that the preparation, but I do not guess that this was used in the past.
00:21:59
Marlene: No, no, it was not used. We never used anything of that because this was not really working. And as you are saying, this is. It does not fulfill the German requests for real donation receipt. Maybe we can have a look in Airtable if there is something which has more the details.
00:22:24
James Redenbaugh: But my question is because we can in. In Donor Box, we can add whatever static information we want to that receipt.
00:22:41
Marlene: And could that be also in German? Could we Also say that in German. Yeah, yeah, we could. Right.
00:22:51
James Redenbaugh: But is it, Is it a problem that it doesn't that it only shows things from donor box?
00:23:04
Marlene: That's a different issue. I would say this is your question is if people are paying via our bank account, that this is not showing here. Right?
00:23:16
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:23:17
Marlene: I would say we could then put that together or we could send then two donation receipts to the people, one with all what they paid via Stripe PayPal. Oh, here's bank account.
00:23:34
Reinold: I agree.
00:23:36
Marlene: And one other one which we then make hand by a manual for those who pay via bank account, for example.
00:23:50
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:23:52
Marlene: Because we only need this for the Germans, the English speaking people or the outside of Germany speaking living people cannot use a donation receipt from Germany.
00:24:09
James Redenbaugh: Yes.
00:24:12
Marlene: So we are speaking about maybe 80 people or so. But it's still at the moment it's a very manual process which I would like to automize a bit more or as much as possible.
00:24:29
James Redenbaugh: Well, if we have all that data in say Airtable, it's easy to automate a process with N8N that will take that data when it's ready and convert it into a PDF in whatever format with whatever information we need on it.
00:24:53
Marlene: Could we have a look at airtable if I'm right that there is something prepared there or if that memory of mine is wrong.
00:25:05
James Redenbaugh: Yes. We did build a. A receipt builder in there.
00:25:10
Marlene: We did. Right.
00:25:14
James Redenbaugh: I've got to log into that airtable account.
00:25:19
Reinold: Malena, do you have an idea how many people are paying donations out of donor box? Outside of donor box, not in maybe.
00:25:32
Marlene: 30.
00:25:34
Reinold: 30 people?
00:25:35
Marlene: Yeah, something like that.
00:25:37
Reinold: Not the big effort to create this manually because no bank account CSV file and from there we can create. So for 30 people we do not have set up a. Automation. Automation.
00:25:57
Marlene: No, no. But Overall it's about 80 or 100.
00:26:01
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:26:02
Reinold: Via donor box. But if.
00:26:04
Marlene: Yeah.
00:26:04
Reinold: We can focus on trying to get spendenberichtis receipts out of donor box. If we can make the draft instead of using airtable. You mean without airtable we can use the donor box. So.
00:26:25
Marlene: Yeah, but that's somehow for me that is related to the question if we want. If there are possibilities that we could stay with airtable, reasonable possibilities to stay with airtable or if we think, oh no, this is all we need more which is more prepared or modulated for us and change to something else.
00:27:08
James Redenbaugh: I think that we could also. Can we manually add donations into donor box?
00:27:19
Marlene: Yeah, I think you can. I think Maria told me that she did that. So people who paid. Yes, I know From Maria that she did that. So. So that people who paid via bank, for example, to have a campaign, to have the whole amount of a campaign. I remember that she put also donations via bank account into that campaign. So that that would mean that we could put all the bank account donations also into donor box and then maybe we even have a whole overview. Yeah, that could be also a possibility.
00:28:32
James Redenbaugh: I'm trying to find where we put the. The receipt automation.
00:28:42
Marlene: Oh, how was that? It was at the end by a tool. Where. Where there's tools or something.
00:28:53
Peter Harris: Did you use their. Their document builder thing? The extension? Yeah, yeah.
00:29:01
Marlene: I mean, yeah, the normal invoices. Exactly.
00:29:05
Peter Harris: Yeah. I set up those for.
00:29:09
Marlene: For Sophie and Johanna. Right?
00:29:10
Peter Harris: Johanna. Yeah, a year and a half ago. Something. But I. I don't think I did anything with the donor box. I think it was all just. It was like for the fall of live receipts. Maybe All.
00:29:28
Marlene: All the different kind of receipts, huh?
00:29:30
Peter Harris: No, I think it was just. I think it was just evolve live stuff. I don't remember us doing donor box.
00:29:39
Marlene: Because these are all different kind of invoices for different kind of events and with the tax issues and everything.
00:29:53
James Redenbaugh: Mm.
00:29:56
Marlene: Maybe you go down further. Maybe there are still some others coming. Event receipts. No, it's all event receipts with EU in German and in English and with EU recharge reverse charge for donation receipts.
00:30:14
Peter Harris: I saw.
00:30:16
Marlene: You saw? Yeah, there was donation receipts. Go down a bit further there. That one.
00:30:22
Peter Harris: That's not. That's not running.
00:30:27
Marlene: Yeah, that's it.
00:30:28
James Redenbaugh: That's all.
00:30:43
Marlene: Could you. Yeah.
00:30:47
Reinold: Yeah, that's the right formula. With exception that there's a need of the postal address.
00:31:02
Marlene: Yeah, but that we changed over time. We changed that because that. It has to be mandatory. That was not there at the beginning.
00:31:36
Reinold: So question is, in my understanding how to create. How to. To. To identify the donations and then make a mass run as of a bulk.
00:31:49
Marlene: But there is a donation button up there. People donors and custom. And then there's a donation up in. At the top.
00:31:56
Reinold: Yeah, but.
00:32:01
Marlene: That one. Yeah, next.
00:32:03
Reinold: Next donation. Next two people. But it's a writer.
00:32:10
Marlene: No, do you see that? James?
00:32:16
Reinold: Donations up.
00:32:21
Marlene: No, at the top where you have in the.
00:32:24
Reinold: Yes, there's one.
00:32:25
Marlene: Yeah, there's.
00:32:26
Reinold: But there's only one donation.
00:32:28
James Redenbaugh: No, it's being filtered. Somebody set up this. Okay, Okay.
00:32:43
Reinold: And from that we can pick. Pick up all donations from last year and connect it with a draft with a donation. Donation receipt.
00:32:58
Marlene: That was the idea. If Zapier would have worked well.
00:33:09
James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Well, we can improve at least this. You Know that connection with N8N.
00:33:44
Marlene: And it even has what it says that below my personal views. It even has collected donations where they are several donations. Collected donations and single donations.
00:34:02
James Redenbaugh: Yes, But if somebody purchases say an event ticket or a program, should that also show up on their yearly receipt?
00:34:45
Marlene: No, only donations.
00:34:48
James Redenbaugh: Okay. And I. I don't think that we can just rely on Stripe because some people are using PayPal it looks like.
00:35:01
Marlene: Yeah, but PayPal goes via Stripe.
00:35:06
James Redenbaugh: It does, yes.
00:35:08
Marlene: Okay. It does. It also if you have a payment.
00:35:11
Reinold: Via Stripe, they can choose between PayPal, Zipp Credit Card and so on.
00:35:21
Peter Harris: So.
00:35:21
Reinold: And this is all documented in Stripe.
00:35:24
James Redenbaugh: Okay.
00:35:27
Reinold: So maybe there is a donation going directly via Stripe, but I guess it's the same. The donation comes over the bank account. So we have to identify this if that is the case. But that's not the big stuff, I think because very seldom.
00:35:51
Marlene: Yeah. And we need to figure out, but I think that's possible that we put manually the bank account donations into the donor box and then we have all the donations of one person in there. But we can figure out what's the more easiest way to do.
00:36:13
Reinold: But we have. Yeah. Yes, right. We have to check. The first time I heard, I hear about this way to put something additional to DonaldBox.
00:36:26
Marlene: Yeah, yeah.
00:36:27
James Redenbaugh: So.
00:36:37
Reinold: Question is, what is our goal for today?
00:36:44
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, good question.
00:36:49
Marlene: Mike. So as far as I know if actually we are having a donor box, we are having a donation campaign and a new one starts this week via donorbox on latest next week. So ideally we would now set the whole process up in the way that everything which all the money which comes up in donor box, connect that via N8N to airtable and set everything up like we would like to have it. And with this campaign we try if this is working better than it was before. Okay, does that make sense?
00:37:36
Reinold: But the question is why doesn't the installation of the process was breakdown does not work in the past because of Zapier.
00:37:58
Marlene: The donations didn't get into Airtable anymore and we had. Didn't have the capacity to take care of that.
00:38:08
Reinold: Okay. Sorry, James, it's much easier for me to speak German. You're born in Enshaidung, James, if you were telling us okay to get N8N to use this connection to our table and we have to check if the formula for donation receipts is correct or not correct. So I have no feeling how far is the process. I see that there is a receipt and seems to be okay, but never checked if how many effort we have to get it Run. So if you're telling okay, we are you. You're taking one week or so. Forget it. Run. We have to decide which way we are follow which approach.
00:39:25
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:39:26
Reinold: All receipts from donor box collected in stripe generated to Excel and make something or what else. But I have no feeling which files the process definition was in the past where it break down.
00:39:50
Marlene: As far as I understood that and maybe Peter, I need your help with that. Is that we set up everything and like we are seeing here also that there even both two different ways of donation receipts collected donation receipt and single donation receipt. Everything is set up here. And it is the right form. Because in that Johanna was really looking at that. And even if that need there needs to be made a change because the letter of has to be named there there we can change that still. The idea is if we have that, we just can then have one Excel kind of airtable list which we connect to that receipt draft and then all the donation receipts come out of airtable via one click. That's not totally true, but you have to go through that. But it is all set up like that. But it never started to really work. We started to work with that, with the invoices and that went. There were manually, things were manual, there were things still to do. But it was easier than to create a whole invoice. And that is what I would like to try. And I know it's only a very small part. It's only those people who now are joining that campaign. It's not the whole year and everything. But just to give that process which we once set up a try to decide, okay, this is worth to follow on to that or no, this has all this kind of lack and mistakes and everything. We try something completely new. That is my idea behind that.
00:41:56
Reinold: Okay.
00:41:57
Marlene: Does that make sense?
00:42:00
James Redenbaugh: I think so.
00:42:04
Peter Harris: I don't remember ever really seeing errors with the zapier donor box setup. So if the data is accurate, then using airtable for making receipts is. Makes sense. That should work.
00:42:23
Reinold: Who would take care for this? I'm not that familiar with airtable and how. How much effort it is to. To get the. The. The list of all spending receipts.
00:42:41
Peter Harris: Well, if the. If the data is still being processed from Zapier on transactions, if that's still arriving, then it's very simple.
00:42:54
Marlene: Even the fee could do that. She did that with the receipts.
00:42:57
Peter Harris: Yeah. And I can show Reinhold how it works to use this airtable extension.
00:43:05
Marlene: Mm.
00:43:12
Peter Harris: I think if James has found a better, more stable solution for getting the data in, it still makes sense.
00:43:20
James Redenbaugh: To.
00:43:22
Peter Harris: Take Zapier out of the processing.
00:43:25
Marlene: Yeah, yeah.
00:43:30
Peter Harris: And then what would be the next round of decisions as far as all of the other types of transactions that need to be processed that also require creating a CRM if one is not used somewhere else?
00:43:52
Marlene: Yeah. When the entire process this team. In airtable. But that was the idea if that we try this as a very small process with airtable and then okay, if that is convincing us then we could say okay, we stay with airtable, we stay with that how we set up things because this now worked. And then we go into the other processes and then we decide do we want to have automatic invoices via airtable or do we stay with that what we have in Stripe because that's now set up and much better and only have donation receipts out of airtable and maybe I don't know, participating at an event?
00:44:56
Reinold: As I remember, our main goal is to reduce complexity. So if we have the goal to to use a financial CRRM system or FIBU, then the question is should we set on airtable and the automation it does not fit into the goal to have it as simple as possible, in my opinion. Other point is if James or Peter tells us okay, I need six hours to get the complete spent and beinigen created and then send out that would be fine. But on the other thing I would remember or inan to our goal make it as simple as possible. And this means to the reduction of tools.
00:46:02
Marlene: Yeah, but that doesn't give us a solution for that. We don't have a decision a new or new decision basis for a CRM system which we still don't have. And that was the idea to give us a support. How should we decide which CIM system we are taking? We have one which we were convinced that could work. Then we had this with different problems and the idea was beside it doesn't take a week for James to set that up because that's not then too much money for that. But if it's more or less easy to set that up in the way how we thought then we can. Then I have a foundation for saying okay, this could be a CRM system. Does that fit to all the other requests we have? No one knows at the moment. That's my. How should I decide which kind of CRM system I would like to have to Only because Odoo tells me how everything how nice everything works. They don't speak about the whole work behind that. And before that we partly did. Maybe there are different approaches. I'm more the type of A person who needs to work with something and to figure out, okay, this I find reasonable. I cannot think that through without doing anything about with that. But there are different approaches and maybe the two of us need to discuss that more in detail before.
00:48:12
Reinold: James.
00:48:13
James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Well, I've almost got the NAD web hook to air table working. I think I just need to test a couple things when we get off this call and then maybe we could do some tests, send some $1 donations through and see how they, how they come up. And then the idea, my idea is. In N8N instead of creating a, a web, a workflow for every thing we want to automate, like we have in Zapier, we have one big workflow so we have multiple inputs and multiple outputs. So we have Donor Box coming in, but then also. Registrations and anything else coming in. And then that can be processed to automatically create a donation or a purchase in Airtable. But it could also be used to do the same in Odoo if we, if we want to go with that. It can also be used to automate emails. I think that when people donate via Donor Box, the email that they get as a confirmation is fine. And if the Airtable donor receipt is working for that once a year thing, then that's, that's great. If it's not sufficient, then we can make a different N8N automation to, to create those, those receipts and email them out to people.
00:50:05
Marlene: Mm mm. Yeah, I would say let's, let's go with that and give that a try. Like you were saying with Donor Box and with some testing of Donor Box and parallel. Reinhold and myself, we are discussing further how to, to. To figure out if that as a system is too complicated and if we want to have more simple system and if that there are more simple system or less simple, more simple systems and how we are dealing with all kind of different tools we have, would they work together or do we have all kind of peril systems? Questions like that. And then, then we get a sense for that or I get a sense for that and then we figure out, okay, we stay with this so we really start something completely new or this is. Will be combined anyway or whatever. Or needs to be combined anyway. Whatever.
00:51:17
James Redenbaugh: Okay. Yeah, sounds good.
00:51:25
Marlene: So that means you would, you would give it a try and send us when we need to test or when we should test it also. And I'm just wondering about the timetable about this because it's only two weeks left.
00:51:49
James Redenbaugh: I can do it right when we get off this call. We can also automate When a new campaign is created in donorbox, it can automatically make a new campaign in airtable and then we can connect that campaign to the donations that start coming in.
00:52:08
Marlene: Mm. Mm.
00:52:11
James Redenbaugh: I think that would be good.
00:52:13
Marlene: Yeah. So then when we now start this new campaign this week or next week, then. And create that in donor box, I will send you that name or say we want to have that campaign set up with N8N into airtable like we were saying. And then we see what comes out of that.
00:52:37
James Redenbaugh: Cool.
00:52:53
Marlene: Okay. So.
00:52:59
Peter Harris: Bruce Los. Yeah, I'm gonna talk to Musan Studian for your English test, Morgan.
00:53:09
Marlene: Oh, okay.
00:53:13
Peter Harris: So.
00:53:14
Marlene: So good luck.
00:53:19
Peter Harris: Yeah. Just let me know if you need anything.
00:53:22
Marlene: Yeah, yeah, we will come back to you.
00:53:23
Peter Harris: Sounds like there's a plan going forward. That's good.
00:53:26
Marlene: Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah. Bye. Bye.
00:53:29
Peter Harris: Bye. Bye.
00:53:30
Marlene: Yeah, ciao. Okay, but I. I would say we just go with that and give that a try.
00:53:39
James Redenbaugh: Sounds good.
00:53:40
Marlene: And then we go from there.
00:53:44
James Redenbaugh: Okay, great.
00:53:45
Reinold: Who's preparing the. Lots of step picking up the data from airtable and connect with a. With a receipt and creating the yearly receipt for the German people. Who is testing this? Who is familiar with this?
00:54:05
Marlene: Peter is. And Sophie should be also. And then we will find out with them if we are able to do that or if this is too complex or if there are still things not working like we would like to. The preparation was. Is not good enough. So to say, then we go from there.
00:54:26
James Redenbaugh: Okay, Sounds good.
00:54:31
Marlene: Okay, good.
00:54:33
James Redenbaugh: Okay, guys, I'll let you know how it goes very soon.
00:54:37
Marlene: Yeah, good. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, good. Bye. Bye. Thank you.
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