Download all PDF Receipts at one time
complete
Alex Coleman
As a site owner I'd like to download all PDF receipts at once instead of having to click into each donation.
Ben Meredith
under review
Hey there! Here's a little context for this request:
PDF functionality (including the PDF tool in exports, the PDF receipts add-on, Annual receipts add-on, etc) all use an open source library (TCPDF) that generates the PDF on the fly, so when the donor (or site admin) clicks the button, the PDF is generated and downloaded, only to live in the browser of the downloader. It’s not on the server of the site at all (in terms of storage).
So when people want to download all of them at once, what they are asking for is “can I generate hundreds of PDFs simultaneously, without crashing the site? "
The answer is “probably not.” So we didn’t build in bulk functionality at all, because it would only cause trouble for the vast majority of our users who are not on top-of-the-line hosting.
Even for those users, WordPress itself doesn’t have a great way to handle background processes, so it might be unnecessarily complex and impossible for all of them.
That's not to say we'll never do it, just that we'd have to see a ton of intereste in order to pursue it, because it's not a small feature.
Stephanie Liy
complete
Stephanie Liy
Hi Folks,
We are very pleased to announce that bulk downloads for PDF Receipts are available as part of PDF Receipts 2.4.0. Go ahead and update at your earliest convenience and let us know if you have any issues.
Happy Fundraising!
P
Philippe Imoucha
I would like to have this feature as well. For accounting purposes in France, it is necessary to print each donation receipt individually because of the sequential number (French tax offices require to keep all receipts in a repository).
We are also supposed to keep all receipt in a sequential order, which is not th case because there could be donation cancelled or pending which never comes to a real donation. So we get holes in the sequential numbers.
I used to build manually these receipts with excel VBA macro, which was working well
This is a lot of work for us as an NGO.
Jini Appel
I would like to have this feature as well. For accounting purposes in Germany, it is necessary to print each donation receipt individually because of the sequential number (German tax offices love to make everything complicated) - this is a lot of work for us as an NGO.
Mark Geallis
Yes I upgraded last week to access the annual receipts add on which I thought would have the desired functionality. Many older (the majority that actually donate) donors are not computer and email savy even today and want a printed mailed receipt. We need to adapt to donors not make them jump through our hoops. But Even if I was to follow your recommendation is there a bulk email future to send each individual donor the invitation to download their PDF or set up an account? I don't see it so again with my 39 donors it is not a big task but to someone with hundreds or thousands your system should make it easy for them to send out the year end invitation in bulk with just a few clicks.
I would hope your team can come up with a work around to overcome your server load fears. Perhaps you can hire a developer to write a script to slowly generate each PDF then send it out and then do another 30 seconds later? THat should overcome your challenges with security of them being housed on the server and fear of overloading resources.
I will continue using your softwared this year and see where you are in the fall. Unfortunately I had just written but not distributed a blog article (my first) about how your solution was superior to many others I have used over the years and at a great price. Now that article cant be sent because to me this is a big deal. I did go into each onor and downloaded their PDF to my computer and will distribute them Friday on the anniversary of our organization at www.homeless2home.org being founded.
I appreciate your help, suggestions and fast responses!
Thanks,
Mark G
Ben Meredith
Mark Geallis: I'd recommend using an email service for the message. Using something like Mailchimp or similar, you export out a list of emails in a CSV file, import them into the Email service provider, and then send them a message.
It's not a "fear" of anything really, it's the reality of WordPress hosting that a process that attempts to iterate over even just hundreds of donations or donors and then create a PDF
would break things
. It would create far more problems than it solves, without significant investment of developer time.We're open to looking into it, but with only 5 folks indicating that this feature is important to them so far, it'll take a bit more interest, for sure.
Mark Geallis
I expected this standard and vital feature would be included when I upgraded from free recently. Sending annual reports is what motivated me to upgrade now. If this feature is not implemented for next years annual reporting period I will likely switch to another provider though I do like your donor solution very much otherwise. I am glad we are in our pre launch phase and only have 39 donors now but will need PDF batching features in the future. I hope you can find a work around to your challenges and make this happen.
Ben Meredith
Mark Geallis: Hey Mark! Have you seen our Annual Receipts add-on? That allows you to send a link to all donors, and they can then download their individual annual receipt that way.
It's highly unlikely we'll build the ability to bulk-download all PDF receipts. As I mention in the pinned comment here, it's not as though the PDFs are in some folder that you could just download them. They are generated on the fly, and that process would cripple most web servers if you tried to do it all at once. If it's a dealbreaker type of functionality, you'd probably be best to interface with at third party developer who could potentially write a script that programmatically goes through and creates the files in bulk.
Ben Meredith
under review
Hey there! Here's a little context for this request:
PDF functionality (including the PDF tool in exports, the PDF receipts add-on, Annual receipts add-on, etc) all use an open source library (TCPDF) that generates the PDF on the fly, so when the donor (or site admin) clicks the button, the PDF is generated and downloaded, only to live in the browser of the downloader. It’s not on the server of the site at all (in terms of storage).
So when people want to download all of them at once, what they are asking for is “can I generate hundreds of PDFs simultaneously, without crashing the site? "
The answer is “probably not.” So we didn’t build in bulk functionality at all, because it would only cause trouble for the vast majority of our users who are not on top-of-the-line hosting.
Even for those users, WordPress itself doesn’t have a great way to handle background processes, so it might be unnecessarily complex and impossible for all of them.
That's not to say we'll never do it, just that we'd have to see a ton of intereste in order to pursue it, because it's not a small feature.