One letter, set up once, on every gift in its category.
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Set up a thank-you letter once, and every gift gets the right letter, filled in and ready to send. Letters live in Settings, under Communications. Click Add letter. Give it a name, a subject line, and who it comes from: a name, and a mailbox on your own email domain. Templates has ready-made letters for Chanukah, Purim, the High Holidays and more. We'll pick Chanukah. The words in blue are merge fields. Each donor's own name, the amount they gave, and the department fill in by themselves. Next, open the PDF text tab. This is the letter that gets printed, or attached to the email as a PDF. Keep it to the letter itself. We'll add the donor's salutation, and a line of thanks with the amount they gave. Then, under PDF template, choose the letterhead it prints on. Ours is called Chanukah Receipt. Back on the email, click Preview to read it with sample details filled in, just the way a donor will see it. Looks good. Save the letter. The letterhead itself is set up once, under PDF templates: a PDF you upload, with Has receipt stub checked. The receipt stub at the bottom has form fields made in Adobe Acrobat, named for what goes in them, like Name, Amount, and ReceiptNumber. CMS fills them in for every gift. Now tell CMS when to use the letter. In Financials, Categories, find the Chanukah subcategory under Donation, and open it. Choose the new letter as its Default letter, and save. Let's see it work. On a family's Transactions tab, click Plus Payment. Enter the amount, how it was paid, and the check number. Then start typing the category, and pick Chanukah, under Donation, from the list. CMS turns on the receipt, and picks the Chanukah 2026 letter for you. Open the arrow next to Save, and choose Save and Send. The thank-you opens, addressed to the family, with their names and the amount already filled in. Open PDF Letter to see what's attached: the letter on your letterhead, and below it, the receipt stub, filled in with this gift's date, amount and receipt number, ready to tear off. You can still change the wording for this one donor. When it's right, click Send. Sent. The payment now shows the thank-you as sent, so it won't go out twice by mistake. To thank many donors at once, use Batch Letters. It sends each payment that hasn't been thanked yet its own letter, by email or printed. Write your thank-you letter once, print it on your letterhead with its receipt stub, and link it to a category. Every gift then gets the right letter and receipt, filled in for that donor and sent in one click.