Primary Records

When you want to find or report on information in CDM+, the first question to ask is, “What is the primary record I want to find/report?”

Examples of a primary records include:

• Individual

• Contribution

• Vendor

• Payroll

Generally, any window ending in Record means that type is a record you can report on.

The primary record specifies which record shows up on each line of your report or window. Say you have a giving unit with 5 contributions. Do you want one row per contribution or one per giving unit? This distinction is critical to knowing which custom listing or window to use to build your report.

Example Scenario

Consider this request from a board member:

Can you give me a report of people under 45 who gave to the outreach fund last year?

This request could refer to several different record types in CDM+:

• People under 45 - could mean Individuals

• People who gave - could mean Giving Units

• Giving - could mean Contributions

• Outreach fund - could mean Giving Fund

Because of this, you could use:

1. Individual Custom Listing and Export

2. Giving Unit Custom Listing and Export

3. Contributions Custom Listing and Export

Ultimately, it depends on what the board member wants. Does people mean Individuals or Giving Units? If you use Individuals, joint givers will appear twice on the report. If you use giving units, you may have results for a couple where one person is under 45 and the other is over 45. If you use contributions, you will see a list of gifts and the givers will be repeated, one for each of their gifts.

There isn’t a right or wrong answer – what matters is that you clarify the reporting request so that you provide accurate and expected results. This example show how important a subtle difference inlanguage can be when translating request like this into CDM+ database.