When someone fills out one of your web forms — a donation form, an RSVP, a payment link, a contact form — CMS captures it as a submission. The Submissions page is where you review each submission, confirm which family it belongs to, and import it into CMS so the donation, contact details, or reservation are recorded.
This article covers the Submissions page. It walks through getting there, how CMS automatically matches each submission to a family, how to review and correct the four contact fields, and how importing works.
Getting to the Submissions Page
You can reach a form’s submissions three ways:
- Forms list — open Forms, then click a form’s Submissions.
- Dashboard — the Form Submissions widget lists each form with a count; click a form to jump straight to its submissions. This is the most common entry point.
- CMS Today email — the daily email may include a link to new submissions.
The breadcrumb at the top reads Forms › Submissions · {form name}. Click Forms in the breadcrumb to go back to the full forms list.
The Layout: List on the Left, Review Pane on the Right
The page is split. The list on the left is the queue of submissions; the review pane on the right shows the currently selected submission and exactly where each piece of it will land. On a wide screen the first submission is selected automatically so you can start reviewing right away. On a phone the panes stack — tap a row to open its review pane full-screen.
Submissions — My Donation Form
Forms › Submissions · My Donation FormExport
New 2ImportedAll
Goldberg, David & Saragoldberg@example.com Matched
✓ Kramer, Yaakov & Rivkakramer@example.com Matched
Berman, Shalomberman@example.com Matched
Submission1 / 3
GeneralPaymentOther
FieldDataResultGoes To
FamilyGoldberg, David & SaraMatchedGoldberg, David & Sara ▾
Address123 Main StreetMatched123 Main Street ▾
Email———
Phone(555) 123-4567Matched(555) 123-4567 ▾
The list (left) and the review pane (right). The second row’s name is a blue link — it has already been imported.
Automatic Matching (Lookup)
As soon as the list loads, CMS looks up every new submission automatically — no button to press. For each one it tries to find the family it belongs to, and within that family the matching address, email, and phone. You’ll see the rows fill in with a green Matched or blue New tag as the lookups complete.
A lookup ends in one of four states:
| State | What it means |
|---|
| Matched | An existing family (and/or contact detail) was found. The submission will attach to it. |
| New | No existing match — a new family (or new address/email/phone) will be created on import. |
| — | Nothing was submitted for that field, so there is nothing to match or import (common on payment links, which carry no email/phone). Shown as a dash. |
| Lookup error | The lookup couldn’t finish. The row shows the reason, and the rest of the page is unaffected. Use Re-lookup or pick a family by hand. |
One submission failing never blocks the others — each row is looked up independently.
The General Tab: Four Fields
The General tab lays out the four things every submission resolves to — Family, Address, Email, Phone — as a table with four columns:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|
| Field | Which piece: Family, Address, Email, or Phone. |
| Data | What the person actually submitted. |
| Result | The lookup outcome for that field: Matched, New, or —. |
| Goes To | Where it will land. A dropdown you can change — pick an existing record on the family, or leave it to be added as new. |
Family
The family is the anchor. When it’s Matched, the Goes To shows the matched family with an × to clear it. To match a different family, type a name in the search box and pick from the results.
Changing the family resets the other three
Because address, email, and phone belong inside a family, picking a different family clears them and re-matches them inside the newly chosen family. This prevents one family’s records from ever attaching to another. Only genuinely new values are left blank.
Clearing the family with the × means “create a brand-new family from the submitted details.” If no family matches at all, that’s the normal outcome — the row shows New member is Male (change to Female if needed).
Address, Email & Phone
Each of these has its own Goes To dropdown:
- Pick an existing record on the family (Matched), or leave the dropdown on Add as a new address / email / phone (New).
- Make primary — when adding a new one, tick this to make it the family’s primary.
- Assign to — when the family has two primary members, choose whose email/phone this is. If there’s only one primary member, CMS assigns it automatically and hides the choice.
Empty email or phone shows “—”
If the submission didn’t include an email or phone (payment links, for example), that row reads — for both Result and Goes To — there’s nothing to add, so nothing happens. Address is different: even with no submitted address, the Goes To stays editable and defaults to the family’s primary address, because a transaction always needs an address.
Re-lookup and “Approve as-is”
Re-lookup (top of the review pane, or the circular-arrow icon on a list row) discards the stored match and runs the lookup again from scratch. If you have unsaved edits, it asks first.
If a lookup errored or never ran, the row can’t be imported until you either pick a family by hand or tick Approve as-is — import without a match, which creates a new family from the submitted details. When import is unavailable, hovering the greyed-out Import button tells you why.
The Payment & Apply-to-Bill Tabs
Submissions that carry a payment show a Payment tab — the amount, fee, total, charge schedule, card type / last four / expiry, and (for regular donations) an editable Purpose.
Purpose is required for regular donations — a submission can’t be saved or imported without one. Payment-link submissions don’t show a Purpose field at all: their category comes from the bill being paid.
Payment-link submissions also show an Apply to bill tab. It shows the one invoice the link was created for, and lets you split the payment across that bill’s lines. If the donor paid more than the bill, the extra shows as Unapplied and is recorded as a credit on the family account on import.
Importing
There are two ways to import:
- One at a time — open a submission and click Import in the review pane.
- In a batch — tick the checkboxes of several rows in the list and click Import {n} in the toolbar.
Before a row can be imported:
- Its lookup must be finished (not still running).
- It must have a family — matched, hand-picked, or approved as-is.
- A donation row must have a Purpose.
- Any unsaved edits must be saved first — import always uses the last saved state.
After import: the row stays, and its name becomes a link
Imported rows remain on the list until you refresh — they don’t vanish. The count badges update (New drops, Imported rises), and the row’s name turns into a link to that family’s Submissions tab, for both newly-created and matched families. The same link appears whenever you view already-imported submissions on the Imported or All tabs.
Views, Filters & Search
- New / Imported / All — the three tabs at the top. New carries a count of submissions still waiting to be imported.
- Show deleted — tick to mix deleted submissions into the list; a Status column then tells them apart.
- Date range — From / To narrow the list to a window.
- Filter this page — the search box filters the submissions already loaded on the current page by name or email.
- Delete / restore — the trash icon soft-deletes a row; an Undo toast lets you put it back.
Editing & Discarding Changes
Anything you change in the review pane — the family, a Goes To dropdown, gender, purpose, a bill allocation — marks the submission as unsaved. Save commits it; Discard changes throws away every unsaved edit and returns the submission to its last saved state (exactly like refreshing that one row). CMS won’t let you wander off a half-edited submission — switching rows, changing the filter, or paging away all prompt you to save or discard first.
In short: open a form’s submissions, let the automatic lookup match each one to a family, correct anything in the review pane, then Import. Imported rows stay put with a link to their family until you refresh.