Understanding Purposes in Aplos

Purposes are used to track different types or categories of donations received. When using partner integrations, the purposes seen in Aplos reflect how donations were recorded in the partnering software.

For example, if you record a $50 donation from Alex to the Missions Fund in your partnering software, Aplos will create a corresponding "Missions Fund" purpose once you retrieve the partner's transactions. This eliminates the need to create purposes separately in both systems.

For a more detailed overview of purposes in Aplos, refer to our Purposes Guide.

Retrieving Contributions and Unlinked Purposes

After retrieving contributions, a notification at the top of the configuration page will state:
"Your contributions contain unlinked purposes." 

To resolve this:

1. Click the script at the top of the page that identifies "unlinked purposes."
2. Proceed with linking each purpose to ensure proper tracking within Aplos.

Linking Purposes to an Income Account and Fund

For purposes to be properly tracked in Aplos accounting, they must be linked to both an income account and a fund.

To complete this process:

1. Navigate to the configuration screen.
2. Select the appropriate income account and fund for each purpose.
3. (Optional) Add tags to categorize purposes for improved reporting. For more details on using tags, see our Tags Guide.
4. Click "Create" once you have mapped each purpose (note: only one purpose can be created at a time).
   

Managing and Editing Purposes

Once purposes have been created, they can be managed through the Donations tab -> Purposes

To edit a purpose click on the purpose to update its associated fund, income account, or tags. The purposes screen will also display which partner, if any, the purpose is linked to.

To confirm correct mapping, check to ensure a blue chain link shows under the "linked to accounting" column.