Tracking donations due via PocketPC

November 10, 2006 12:50 PM

I need to keep track/remind myself of a weekly contribution. Is there a (PocketPC?) program that will help me?

I am donating a certain amount of money weekly for the rest of the year to a organization as part of a fundraiser. Because they are keeping track and announcing money raised throughout the year, I don't really want to donate all the money right now, or at the end of the year. I do not, however, need to donate weekly - monthly or so is great. My problem is that I tend to forget when I last donated, and then I have no idea how much I'm turning in. I would like a (free) program to help keep track of this.

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My ideal solution:
Integrates with the calendar on my PocketPC. If I don't mark a donation paid for a certain week, it rolls over to next week, adding all unpaid dates. When I check my appointments for the day, I would see something like "Donation: X amount due".

OK Solutions:
A regular PocketPC program, a desktop based program, email based reminder service, or online program - in that order of preference.

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Technically, I am donating the same amount per week. But they sometimes have months where people are encouraged to give more. Bonus points if I can "add" money to a week or month


Oh, this is a small organization, so ideas like automatic bank account withdrawals won't help. This is straight up cash.

posted by niles to grab bag (11 comments total)

By rest of the year, I mean the rest of the year-long donation program, which started about 2 months ago.
posted by niles at 1:28 PM on November 10, 2006

Note on further options: No matter how small this org is, if they would consider setting up a paypal account, that would let you (and anyone) join automated subscriptions -- letting you donate automatically at any interval (and letting either you or them terminate the subscription at any time). It's easy & free to set up a pp subscription when you have a pp account, and it would help them attract people. Yes, many people don't like pp, but many people do.
posted by allterrainbrain at 2:33 PM on November 10, 2006

Most banks of any size will let you set up automatic payments to anybody. If the organization is too small to accept electronic payments, the bank will actually automatically write, "sign," and mail them a check for you. Even if the organization doesn't have a bank account in its name, you could make the check out to the person you'd be handing the cash to.
posted by phoenixy at 3:10 PM on November 10, 2006

Thanks for the ideas with banks and all, but really - I just need a reminder system. Cash is just part of how everything is handled, and it's easier on my part too.
posted by niles at 3:43 PM on November 10, 2006

ah, you need a PocketPC version of this. Sorry, I have no idea if that exists...
posted by phrontist at 6:23 PM on November 10, 2006

Heck yes. Time to dig out the palm.

Actually, that's exactly what I had in mind, until I realized PocketPC has no "ToDo" feature.

Time to research some more...
posted by niles at 8:45 PM on November 10, 2006

niles,

Why do you not set up a recurring all day appointment in outlook and sync it to your Pocket PC? This doesn't handle roll over however. Is that a big problem?
posted by mge at 8:49 PM on November 10, 2006

Heh. I'm not making this very easy...

I don't use Outlook :)

Though, that's another idea to check into. I should be able to find something to provide that functionality however.


Thanks guys.
posted by niles at 8:55 PM on November 10, 2006

I'd second using outlook for a recurring appointment... I've done this before for weekly meetings and I'm honestly surprised that you can't do it direct from the PPC...

If the rollover is really important to you, maybe you can combine a weekly reminder with some sort of Excel spreadsheet that keeps track of the donations... It should be easy to set up a spreadsheet that knows the current date and tallies all the unticked donations before that date to give you a 'donate this to get up to date' figure...

Oh, I just had an idea! You can use something like PocketZenPhone to create a profile that it switches to each week... That profile then automatically launches your S/S to let you know how much you need to donate... Not exactely what you need, but getting closer?

I'll continue to ponder...
posted by ranglin at 3:58 AM on November 11, 2006

The pocket PC Task function is like a ToDo (or just use a calendar appointment as others suggested -- just make it the only thing on your calendar). You don't need to sync it with your desktop if you don't want. Set it up as a recurring Task with a popup reminder. It'll keep reminding you (in 5 minutes or 4 hours or whatever) till you do it for that week/month.
posted by powpow at 10:45 AM on November 11, 2006

If the "recurring appointment in Outlook" thing would work for you, here's how to do it in PocketPC (since the PocketPC side is basically mini-Outlook):

1) Make a new appointment in your calendar.
2) As you're making the appointment, check out the different options that are there. One of them should be "Occurs:" and probably says "Once." That's a drop down list that lets you decide how often the reminder's going to go off.

Like it's been said before - this will just remind you to give your money - it won't track it or add it all up. But at least this'll keep reminding you to do it until you find your perfect software.

And just in case your PocketPC should be set up differently (mine's using the WinMobile 5 OS), feel free to email me and I'll see if I can explain better - I just got my PocketPC a couple of days ago and I'm still trying to un-learn the Palm and bend this iPAQ to my will.
posted by Moondoggie at 7:47 AM on November 26, 2006