how to remove donors

pgm44 wrote:Every time I encode the donations, I see many names of old members and elders in the donorlist. How can I update this list and remove all the names from those who are not in our ward anymore.

Go to Add/Update donors, and set them to Hidden; then they won't appear in most lists in MLS. At the beginning of the 4th year after their last transaction (at least in the US -- retention periods differ in various countries), the record will actually be deleted.

OK thanks, I did that already. I thought there will be another way to remove them.

pgm44 wrote:OK thanks, I did that already. I thought there will be another way to remove them.

If you already set all those unneeded donors to "Hidden", then your initial statement "Every time I encode the donations, I see many names of old members and elders in the donorlist" would not be the case anymore. Donors marked as "Hidden" do not appear in the the selection list that is used when you are picking a donor to associate with a donation as you create a donation batch.

One potential complication: I believe you will find that there are situations where changing a donor's status to Hidden does not work ie. their status can revert back to Visible. If you first insure that the donor is set to "Out of Unit", THEN change the status to Hidden, then the donor will stay Hidden. If the donor is set to "Not a Member" and you change the status to Hidden, then the Hidden status will revert to Visible after a few days. At least, that has been my actual experience in a YSA ward. I called Local unit support when I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get some people to stay Hidden and this is what they told me to do:ie. FIRST change the donor to "Out of Unit" and THEN change the status to Hidden. When I followed this method, my problem was solved.