Beacon makes it easy to split payments into multiple separate records in your database, grouped together by a unique "split ID".
Split payments are useful when:
You receive a donation, and the donor wishes to allocate a different % to different funds, for example:
75% to building wells
25% for general donations
A donor sends you a cheque for £200. £150 is a payment for an event, and £50 is a donation on top.
Only 30% of a payment is eligible for Gift Aid.
Note: The split payments feature is only available with the finance element on the Standard, Premium, and Ultimate plans.
In this article:
Enabling split payments
Split payments are disabled on your account by default. To enable them, head to Settings > Charity preferences, and enable split payments.
This will also add a 'Split payments' card to Payments and a 'Split subscription' card to Subscriptions that will show you all the splits of that record.
Splitting a payment
Once you've enabled split payments, you can split any payment record in your database:
Click the split icon in the top-right of a payment record.
Choose how your payment should be split between things like types, funds, and Gift Aid eligibilities:
You can split a payment into a maximum of 20 payments! Click add split to add as many as you like.
Note: You can split by % of payment or by a fixed amount. The sum of all of the "split payments" must add up to amount set on the original payment.
(Optional) By default, the amount, fund, type, and Gift Aid allowed fields can be set when splitting a payment. Like most things in Beacon, you can change this (and we'll remember your changes):
Click split. After splitting, you'll be able to see the list of the other payments in the group on your split payment card:
You'll also see a handy split icon on payments that have been split:
Splitting subscriptions
Subscriptions can also be split in Beacon. Similarly to payments, splitting a subscription divides up the amount into separate subscription records.
Note: Splitting subscriptions is only supported for standing orders or other subscriptions that haven't come through Beacon donation forms. Stripe and GoCardless subscriptions cannot be split.
When payments are automatically created, each group of payments will be automatically grouped together, each pointing at one of the subscriptions in your split.
Let's look at an example together:
Harrison Ford is donating £100 to you every month. Harrison wants £60 of this to be allocated to community projects, and the rest can be used where it's needed most.
Harrison's £100/month subscription record should be split into two separate subscription records:
Each month, two payment records will be automatically created, each pointing at their corresponding subscription. They'll be grouped together automatically with a unique "Split ID".
Importing split payments
Split payments are grouped together in Beacon by using the Split ID short text field. When a split happens manually in Beacon, a unique ID is generated and set on each of the records in the group.
When importing split payments, make sure that split payments have a shared Split ID field value set to allow Beacon to identify other payments in the group.
Tip: Make sure that your split ID values aren't already used elsewhere in the database. Beacon does not guarantee their uniqueness during imports.
You should also ensure that each split payment is deduplicated with it's own completely unique ID, so that they don't get merged when imported.
For example:
You have a cheque payment with an ID of '12345' that is then split three ways to allocate to different funds.
You would use '12345' as the 'Split ID' (unique group ID to group all three together)
You would use something like '12345-1', '12345-2', and '12345-3' to give each split its own completely unique ID (likely imported to 'Previous database ID' or 'External ID')
Frequently asked questions
Is split payments supported on Beacon forms?
No. Split payments are only supported within the database itself. The split payments feature is designed for handling non-digital donation methods, like cheques, bank transfers, and standing orders.
Is it possible to un-split payments?
Not directly. The simplest way to do this is to merge the split payment records. After merging, you will need to update the 'Split ID' field to be blank, and set the 'Amount' back to it's original value.
How does Beacon group payments together?
When splitting a payment or subscription, we automatically generate a unique ID for the payment records being split, and set this ID into the Split ID short text field.