Accepting Donations from an iChessed Kiosk
iChessed is a touchscreen kiosk that lets visitors donate by tapping a card. iChessed charges the card on its own payment system, then instantly notifies CMS. Special pricing has been negotiated for CMS Users. Make sure you mention that you use CMS Cloud when signing up.
Each donation arrives in your submissions review queue — already matched to a family wherever CMS can — ready for you to review and import, in real time.
Already paid — never charged twice. Because iChessed already collected the money, CMS records the donation; it never re-charges the card. When you import the submission, the payment is entered into your ledger with iChessed’s transaction reference attached.
How It Works
Donor taps cardat the kiosk
→iChessed charges& notifies CMS
→Form Submissionin your review queue
→You review & importrecorded in your ledger
CMS handles the middle steps automatically — including matching each donation to the right family wherever it can. You only do the final review and import.
Where to Find It
Open Settings (gear icon), choose Integrations in the rail, then iChessed. Only administrators can set this up.
Before You Begin
- You have an iChessed account and kiosk.
- You’ll exchange two things with iChessed: you give them your webhook URL, and they give you a secret. Both happen on the setup page.
Step 1 — Connect Your Kiosk
The Connection panel
- Turn Active on.
- Click Copy next to Your webhook URL and email it to iChessed (hello@ichessed.com).
- iChessed enables the webhook and sends you a secret. Paste it into the Webhook secret box.
- Choose a Default subcategory — where donations land when their campaign isn’t mapped yet.
- Click Save connection. CMS sets up everything else behind the scenes.
Keep your secret safe. The webhook secret iChessed gives you is unique to your organization and is what proves a donation really came from your kiosk. CMS stores it encrypted and never shows it again.
Step 2 — Map Your Campaigns
At the kiosk, donors pick a campaign (the purpose of their gift). In the Campaign mapping section you tell CMS which subcategory each campaign records to.
You don’t have to set these up in advance
As donations arrive, any campaign that hasn’t been mapped yet appears automatically under “New campaigns seen from the kiosk.” Pick a subcategory for each and click Map. Until you map it, that campaign uses your Default subcategory, so a donation is never lost. You can also add a mapping manually if you already know the campaign name.
Names must match. A mapping is tied to the exact campaign name iChessed sends. If you rename a campaign in iChessed, it reappears here as a new unmapped campaign (using the default until you re-map it) — it won’t silently record to the wrong place.
Step 3 — Review & Import Donations
Kiosk donations show up in your normal Form Submissions review queue in a designated iChessed form, tagged with an iChessed badge. CMS automatically matches each one to an existing family wherever it can — you don’t have to search for the family. Just open the submission, confirm it looks right, change the match result if needed, and click Import. The payment is recorded with no charge — iChessed already collected it.
When viewing submissions for a family, you might notice the following badges
| Badge | What it means |
|---|
| iChessed | This submission came from your iChessed kiosk. |
| Matched | CMS automatically matched the donor to an existing family. Just confirm and import. |
| New | No existing match (e.g. a first-time or anonymous donor) — CMS creates the contact automatically when you import. |
Keeping an Eye on Your Kiosks
The Kiosks seen panel on the iChessed settings page lists every device that has sent donations, with a count and the last time it reported. CMS doesn’t block unknown devices — this is simply a way to confirm your kiosks are reporting, and to spot anything unexpected.
Good to Know
- Cards are never charged by CMS. iChessed charges at the kiosk; CMS only records the donation.
- Failed or cancelled taps are ignored — only successful donations are recorded in CMS.
- No duplicates. Each donation is recorded once, even if iChessed re-sends the notification.
- Anonymous donors still come through. With no name to match on they arrive as New (annonymous), and CMS creates the contact automatically when you import.
- Nothing is lost before mapping. An unmapped campaign uses your default subcategory and appears under “New campaigns seen” for you to map.
- Go live first, refine later. Set a default subcategory and turn it on — campaigns map themselves into the list as donations arrive.
Donations Aren’t Coming Through?
- Check that Active is on and a secret is saved.
- Confirm iChessed has enabled the webhook for your URL and that your secret is entered correctly.
- A newly added kiosk needs iChessed to point it at your webhook URL.
- For kiosk hardware, payment settlement, or your secret, contact iChessed at hello@ichessed.com.