An end-of-year giving summary (also known as a year-end or annual statement) is the best way to give your donors (both individual and company contacts) a summary of their contributions from the past year. These individualized reports provide a comprehensive snapshot of the donor's history for the given reporting year, encompassing all online and offline transactions.
You can generate summaries for all contacts, specific contacts, or a filtered group or segment of contacts. To deliver reports to your donors, you can have them automatically emailed out by Givebutter, create a custom email using Engage, or you can download, print, and mail them yourself.
The Method column will display the payment method used for each transaction, including offline payment methods such as Stock, In-Kind, Property, and Other.
Want to see an example? View a sample end-of-year report →
Add a custom memo ➕
Before you generate year-end summaries, you have the option of adding a customized memo to each report. This is useful if you need to include tax-deductibility information or a notice that no goods or services were provided in exchange for a donation.
In your dashboard, navigate to Settings in the left-hand menu bar, then select Account.
Click on Year-End Summaries in the sub-menu.
Add your custom memo, and Save.
If added, this memo will apply to all summaries generated. A memo must be added before the year-end summaries are generated.
Emailing summaries 📨
Use this option for the quickest delivery to your supporters, without the need for printing or mailing! Emails (including a default summary message) are automatically sent out to the primary email address on file for each supporter who made at least one contribution in the selected reporting year. Supporters who did not make any contributions will not receive a summary.
From your Contacts page, select the contacts you'd like to send a year-end summary to.
For one or more specific contacts, click the selection boxes on the left side of the relevant contacts.
For a filtered group or segment of contacts, apply filters, then click the selection box to the left of the Name label at the top of the table.
For all contacts (or more than one page of contacts), click the selection box to the left of the Name label at the top of the table, and click Select all ___ rows in the banner that appears.
Once the correct contacts are selected, click on the Actions menu and select Year-End Summaries, and select Send year-end summaries.
In the pop-up window, select the summary year you'd like to send, and verify that you give permission for Givebutter to send an email to your contacts.
Emails will be sent to all relevant contacts (with at least one transaction in the selected summary year) who have a valid primary email address, including unsubscribed contacts. Emails are sent from [email protected], rather than your Engage sender email address. These are not marketing emails.
Click Send year-end summaries to generate and send reports to your selected contacts. Emailed summaries include PDF attachments for your supporters, who can also view an in-browser version via the View Annual Summary button in the email.
We recommend using tags to stay organized and avoid sending duplicate reports to contacts. After sending year-end summaries, apply a tag (i.e., "EOY_2025") to contacts that have been sent a report.
To exclude these contacts when sending another batch of reports, select the Tag filter, and select your EOY tag. Change the selection criteria to None. The resulting list will only include contacts without this tag.
Sample year-end summary email
Sample year-end summary email
This includes a default template message that cannot be edited at this time. The following information will auto-populate:
Your organization's logo (upper left corner)
Your organization's name
The name of the donor
The year of the generated report
If you wish to create a more customizable message, we recommend sending an email to your supporters via Engage, utilizing the available merge tags to populate donor names and end-of-year summaries.
The year-end summary will also be attached to the email as a PDF.
Send yourself a test 📫
You can also send yourself (or someone else) a test report using real data from an example contact. This is useful if you want to see what reports will look like before emailing them out to your supporters.
Select one or more contacts from your contacts table.
In the Actions menu at the top of the page, select Year-end summaries, then select Send test year-end summary. (This won't send an email to your contacts.)
In the pop-up, select the summary year you'd like to test, and select a contact to populate the report with. The report will include their actual data, rather than filler data.
In the Send to field, enter one or more email addresses to send a test to. By default, this will include the email address you're currently logged in with.
Click Send test email.
Sending summaries with Engage ✍
If you would prefer to create a fully customized year-end report, you also have the option of creating your own template using Engage. The use of merge tags supports customized data entry for each specific contact in your Givebutter account.
Create your outbound email using Engage.
Utilize the Year-End Summaries merge tags available in the Engage email composer.
Last Year Year-End Summary Link – specific for this contact
This Year Year-End Summary Link – specific for this contact
This merge tag will auto-populate with a link to the recipient's personalized year-end summary. Please note that this will not include an attached PDF – it will only include a link to a contact's year-end summary.
Haven't used Engage before? Verified nonprofits can connect a domain to send out Engage emails, but you can also quickly email out summaries including a default message without any additional setup.
Downloading summaries 👨👩👦
Use this option if you plan on printing and mailing (or otherwise delivering) physical copies of the exported EOY summaries. Files are generated for each supporter who made at least one contribution in the selected reporting year.
This option does not automatically send reports to your donors. It allows you to save them to your own computer for independent printing and mailing.
From your Contacts page, select the contacts for whom you'd like to export summaries. You can select all contacts, multiple contacts, or filtered groups of contacts.
Click on the Actions menu at the top of the page, and select Year-end summaries. Click on Export year-end summaries.
In the pop-up window, select the summary year you'd like to test, and click Export selected year.
You'll be sent a message to the email address you're logged in with. Sometimes the email can take a few minutes to generate. When it arrives, click the Download button in the email, and it will prompt a download of the export file in ZIP format.
For security, you must be logged into Givebutter to download this export.
After downloading, if you can't locate the file, check your Downloads folder and desktop. Inside the expanded folder, you'll find your end-of-year reports.
To open a ZIP file, you'll need to expand it. On a Mac, you can double-click on the ZIP file, and it will expand to show the folder of reports in PDF format.
Printing summaries on Mac
Open a new Finder window on your Mac. You can do this by clicking on the Finder icon in your dock or, with Finder selected as the active application, using the keyboard shortcut Command + N.
Navigate to the location that contains the files you want to print. In our example, it’s a "summaries" folder in Downloads. Open the folder, and you will see a list of all the reports generated.
Finder may already be open if you've just downloaded your bulk report folder. If you're only seeing a ZIP file, it still needs to be expanded.
Select all the files (Command + A) or just the files you want to print by holding down the Command key and clicking once on each file.
Once the files you want to print are selected, choose one:
Using Finder – Choose File > Print from Finder’s menu bar options, and you'll be prompted to print the files if you have a printer connected.
Using Preview – Open the files with Preview, and choose File > Print from Preview's menu bar options, and you'll be prompted to print the files.
Printing summaries on PC
Go to the Windows Settings interface. Click on Devices and then Printers & Scanners. Select the printing device you would like to use.
A window will pop up after you click on the button 'Open Queue'. Choose all the PDFs that you would like to print and drag them into the queue window.
When the pop-up window appears and prompts if you would like to print all the files at once, click on the option 'Yes' to confirm it.
Individual summaries 🧍♂️
Year-end summaries for individual donors can be found on each contact's profile.
On the Contacts page, select the contact you'd like to view or send a year-end report for (from any year).
In the contact profile, select the Summaries tab. Each participating year will be listed here. To view a report, you can click on the year/name of the report, or click the three dots [...] and select View.
To share a link to the year-end report with your contact, click Copy. You can send this direct link to your contact.
Upon opening the Shareable link, your donor will be able to view, print, or save a digital copy of their EOY summary.
To download the PDF report to your computer, click the three dots [...] and select Download.
FAQ 🤔
Are imported transactions included in an end-of-year report?
Yes! Imported transactions are included in an end-of-year report, even if they were not processed through Givebutter.
Are emailed and downloaded EOY summaries different in any way?
Emailed EOY summaries and summaries that are downloaded and printed are formatted the same way. The content of the resulting PDF summary is identical regardless of how it is generated, so choose the method most convenient for your organization.
My end-of-year summaries weren't sent to all my contacts.
This is likely because not all of your contacts submitted a donation in the selected reporting year, or because there wasn't a valid email address on file for all the relevant contacts. Reports will not be generated for contacts that didn't have any transactions in the specified report year.
Are end-of-year reports customizable? Can I add text to these summaries?
Yes! You can add a memo or additional information to your end-of-year summaries. To do this, visit your Account Settings. Under Year-End Summaries, you can add and save a memo that will be added to each summary generated.
Are refunded transactions included in an end-of-year report?
Yes, refunded transactions are included on a contact's end-of-year report, labeled as refunded.
Can end-of-year reports be emailed out to my donors?
Yes! Please see the above option for emailing summaries for instructions on how to email bulk EOY summaries from within Givebutter. Please note that emailed reports are not automatic at the end of the year – summaries must still be generated and sent by an admin.