<p>Hi Troy,</p>

<p>Just copying some of our email here for others to see! Peter has some great insight too.</p>

<p>My initial thoughts are that if you aren't having any major issues tracking donations in a spreadsheet format or similar then I would hold off on diving into Salesforce. Especially as you haven't&nbsp;really started paying yourselves yet. We've had a lot of custom builds and add-ons to get our Salesforce where it is today (ie. automatic thank you emails &amp; donation receipts, adding custom fields on donations and contacts, donation reporting etc.). And the truth is it still takes up a lot of my time to keep on top of while slowly&nbsp;improving all our integration with other donor systems.</p>

<p>One issue we had was that because we required many integration layers (i.e.&nbsp;with Paypal, Credit card payments, Xero etc) these still cause us issues today as we aren't able to easily fix problems that arise as we have to find the issues in someone else's code - and this is all with a dedicated IT manager. So there is also a danger you'll go down the&nbsp;wrong path and waste time. Basically it's a long road to get to a point where you'll notably save time and money and this will depend on the size of your donor base. At this stage I would say as long as you are acknowledging each donation and are able to reconcile the bank balances with your donation spreadsheets at the end of the month - that is the most important.&nbsp;</p>

<p>In the long run it is a hugely valuable tool so it would be beneficial to keep yourself familiar with the system with the free version and keep in mind for when your staff capacity increases and/or your donor base begins to outgrow&nbsp;your&nbsp;current systems.</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Cheers!</p>
