A pledge is a promise to give, while each payment is the money the donor actually pays. When Rhythm collects a payment against a pledge, it creates a gift for that payment. This pledge payment gift gives the donor credit for that installment in their giving history.
This article explains how Rhythm builds the payment gift, how splits and soft credits carry over, and what happens if the payment is later refunded or voided.
Each Payment Becomes Its Own Gift
When Rhythm records a collected payment against a pledge, it creates a pledge payment gift for that installment. That gift counts toward the donor’s giving totals, as described in How Donor Giving Totals Are Calculated.
The payment gift is separate from the pledge record. If one pledge is paid in installments, you will see one payment gift for each installment collected, and each gift points back to the same pledge. For example, if a pledge is paid over twelve months, expect to see roughly twelve payment gifts on the donor’s record by the time it is fully paid, not just one.
For reporting, a paid pledge installment is a gift with the gift type "Pledge Payment." When you build a report on paid pledges or applied pledge payments, filter on that gift type.
How the Payment Is Split Across Funds
If the pledge is split across more than one fund, each payment gift is split too. Rhythm does not apply the pledge’s percentages to the payment total; it uses the amounts actually paid on each line of that payment.
If a payment line uses a fund that does not match any pledge split, Rhythm credits that line to the pledge’s primary fund. Rhythm does not log a message or flag this change. If the pledge has no splits, Rhythm credits the full payment to the pledge’s primary fund.
You can review the payment gift’s fund breakdown on the gift page’s Splits tab. The tab lists each split’s fund and amount, or shows a plain sentence when the gift has no splits.
Soft Credits and Thank-You Gift Value Carry Over Too
If the pledge has soft credits, Rhythm copies those same soft credits to every payment gift created against the pledge. The people or organizations credited on the pledge are credited again on each individual payment.
The soft-credit amounts stay the same as they were recorded on the pledge. The payment gift’s Soft Credits tab shows who is credited, for which fund, and why, just like it does for any other gift.
If the pledge has a thank-you gift, or premium, with a fair market value, each payment gift carries a prorated share of that value. That value reduces the tax-deductible amount of the gift, and Rhythm calculates the share based on how much of the pledge that payment represents.
Rhythm calculates these shares per payment and does not reconcile them against the full premium value at the end. Because of normal rounding, the shares might not add up exactly to the premium’s full value unless the pledge’s last installment includes an adjustment to correct the rounding.
What a Refund Does
When a pledge payment is refunded, Rhythm does not edit or delete the original payment gift. Instead, it records a separate negative gift that backs the refunded amount out of the donor’s giving.
The negative amount is the sum of every line the refund covers. If the refund includes a line for something other than a fundraising product on the same payment, Rhythm includes that line in the negative total too. Because of that, the reversal gift’s amount can be larger than the refunded fundraising portion.
If the original payment gift had splits, the reversal reduces each affected fund’s split to match the amount refunded on that line. If the original gift had no splits, the reversal reduces the main fund amount.
Rhythm also backs out a prorated share of the premium’s value on the reversal. It calculates that share as the fraction of the whole payment that was refunded. Because that fraction uses the payment’s full total, including any non-fundraising lines, the negative premium share is not guaranteed to match only the fundraising portion that was refunded.
What a Void Does
Voiding a pledge payment works differently from refunding it. Instead of creating a reversal gift, Rhythm deletes the original payment gift as if it had never been recorded.
Warning
If a payment was refunded first and then later voided, Rhythm does not remove the earlier negative reversal gift from the refund. The void deletes the original payment gift, but the reversal gift stays on the donor’s record with nothing left to reverse.
If you are reconciling a donor’s giving history and find a negative gift with no matching payment gift, this refund-then-void sequence is one likely explanation.
Related
See the related articles to learn what a pledge is and how to create one, how pledge progress and status work, the rules every gift follows no matter how it was created, how to review a pledge, and how to set up thank-you gifts and their fair market values.