A large number of charities utilise collection tins, pots, buckets or boxes to encourage donations within local communities. It’s likely you’ll want to keep track of your tins, their placement status, and donations you’re receiving through them - and Beacon can help you with all of this.

There are varying steps in this process which may or may not be applicable to you depending on how your organisation utilises and tracks Collection Tins - have a read and do what works best for you!

The first step is to create a new record type for Collection tins - see our guide on creating new record types.

Once you’ve created your “Collection tins” record type, you’ll want to customise it so that you have appropriate fields for the information you’ll want to store. In my case, I have a field for the Tin Number, a field for Notes, a field for any attachments I may want to add, and a dropdown list which will allow me to set the status of any Collection Tin. You can add and alter fields by entering ‘Customisation Mode’ through the cog on the right hand side of the screen:

My Collection Tin Records are set up to look like the below:

If your collection tins are placed in specific shops or offices permanently, you’ll want to add a field for the Organisation in which they’re placed. To do this - create a new field, and in ‘Field Type’, select ‘Point to Another Record’

Your ‘Field Type’ should now be populated - you’ll then want to add the type of record you want to link to! In the ‘Add Types’ dropdown, select Organisations. Click out of the dropdown, and save.

If you’d like to track the Tin donations you’re receiving into Beacon, this will be straightforward now the Collection Tin record exists. Let’s look at linking the payments up with the collection tin.

Go to your ‘Payments’ record type, and click into a payment record - if you don’t have any yet, you’ll want to create one! Next, go into ‘Customisation Mode’ and click into the ‘Type’ Dropdown. This will allow you to add a new type for donations from the tins - which for my records, I’m calling ‘Collection Tin Donation’ Add the new payment type, and click save.

Then we’ll want to add a new card to display the Collection Tin information on each payment.

Use this guide to Creating Related Record Cards

We’ll want to ensure that the ‘Collection Tins’ cards points to your ‘Collection Tin’ record type, and shows your Tin number or name. Now you’ve done this - you’ll want to do a similar thing on your ‘Collection Tin’ record - but here you’ll want to add a Related Record Card that shows ‘Payments’. Once you’ve done both steps, you’ll be able to see the tin related to a payment on a Payment Record, and any payments from a Collection Tin on the Collection Tin record.

If your tins are regularly placed in different locations, you’ll want to keep track of where they’re placed. For this, we’ll need a Collection Tin Placement Record

Create a new record type

For this placement record, 2 fields that you’ll almost definitely want to include are “Organisation” - to show the organisation in which the collection tin has been placed, and ‘Tin Number/Name’ - to show the collection tin which you’ve placed. Both of these should be ‘Point to Another Record’ types - pointing to Organisation and Collection Tin respectively.

Additional fields which may be worth adding on this record are “Date Issued”, “Date Returned”, and any additional notes regarding the tin placement

Once created, we’ll want to add a Related Record Card that shows ‘Payments’. Then, head to your Collection Tin record and add a Related Record Card to show ‘Collection Tin Placements’ - you can also add a Related Record Card for ‘Collection Tin Placements’ on the Organisation record type as well.