1. What Is Pulse?
Pulse is a monthly financial intelligence report delivered automatically to every Click & Pledge account administrator. It transforms your raw transaction data into clear, actionable insights — covering revenue trends, recurring giving health, payment performance, campaign results, and more.
Each report is personalized to your organization and covers a trailing 12-month window, so you always have both the latest month’s results and the full-year trajectory in one place.
Pulse is delivered in four formats:
- Email notification — a summary with key metrics hits your inbox within the first week of each month.
- Interactive web dashboard — a private link opens your full dashboard in any browser, on any device. No app to install.
- Downloadable Excel workbook — a multi-tab spreadsheet with charts, tables, and raw data — ready for your own analysis or to hand to your accountant.
- PDF executive summary — a polished, print-ready document designed for board packets, grant applications, and stakeholder reporting.
For organizations using Salesforce, Pulse reports are also available directly inside the Click & Pay Suite dashboard in Salesforce — with one-click downloads for both the Excel workbook and the PDF, plus a link to the interactive dashboard.
Pulse is included with every Click & Pledge account at no additional cost.
2. Why It Matters
Most nonprofit organizations have the data they need to make better decisions — it’s just trapped in transaction logs and admin screens. Pulse extracts that data, computes the trends, and presents it in a format you can act on immediately.
Instead of logging into your account and running ad-hoc queries, Pulse delivers the answers before you even ask the questions: Is recurring revenue growing or shrinking? Which campaigns are driving results? Are we seeing more fraud attempts? How do we compare to last year?
The goal is simple: You should never walk into a board meeting, a grant review, or a strategy session without knowing exactly where your fundraising stands — and Pulse makes sure you don’t.
3. How to Access Your Report
There are three ways to access your Pulse report, depending on how you work:
Via email
Every account administrator receives a Pulse email at the beginning of each month. The email contains a snapshot of your key metrics and a prominent button that takes you directly to your interactive dashboard.
Via Click & Pay Suite in Salesforce
If your organization uses Salesforce, your Pulse reports are available directly inside the Click & Pay Suite dashboard in Salesforce. Each reporting period is listed with one-click download icons for the Excel workbook and the PDF executive summary, plus a “View” link to open the interactive dashboard. Historical reports accumulate here automatically — you can access any prior month without searching your email.
The “CONNECT Pulse Report” widget in your Click & Pay Suite dashboard in Salesforce. Each period shows download icons for Excel (green) and PDF (red), plus a “View” link to open the interactive dashboard. Report data is sourced from CONNECT.
Via direct link
Where does the data come from? All Pulse data is sourced exclusively from your Click & Pledge CONNECT transaction records. Data entered manually in Salesforce (such as offline gifts logged directly into Salesforce objects) is not included. If a transaction was not processed through or recorded in CONNECT, it will not appear in your Pulse report.
Your interactive dashboard lives at a unique, private URL. No login is required — the link itself is your key. Bookmark it for instant access anytime.
At the top of the dashboard you will find the controls for navigating and downloading your reports:
Use the Year and Month dropdowns (1 in the diagram above) to navigate between reporting periods. Reports are available starting from January 2025, and a new month is added automatically at the beginning of each month.
The download buttons (2) let you save the PDF executive summary or the full Excel workbook for the currently selected period. These are the same files available through the Pulse email and the Click & Pay Suite in Salesforce.
Tip: The dashboard works on phones, tablets, and desktops. If you need to pull up your numbers in a meeting or on the go, just open the link — no laptop required.
4. What’s Inside Your Report
Your Pulse report is organized into sections, each designed to answer a specific set of questions. Not every section appears for every organization — the report adapts to your account. For example, bank deposit data only appears if you process through Stripe, and Salesforce-specific sections only appear for Salesforce-connected accounts.
5. Ways to Use Pulse
Pulse is designed to be useful far beyond a quick glance at your inbox. Here are some of the ways organizations are putting it to work:
The PDF executive summary is designed for exactly this. Drop it into your board packet as-is — it’s polished, branded, and tells the financial story in a format board members can digest in minutes. For deeper detail, include select tabs from the Excel workbook.
When a funder asks for financial performance data, the PDF provides a credible, third-party-generated summary. The trailing 12-month revenue chart and campaign detail give funders what they need without requiring you to build a custom report from scratch.
Share the dashboard link with your development team so everyone sees the same numbers. No one has to pull a report or build a spreadsheet — the data is already there, updated monthly.
The Recurring Health section flags expiring cards and failed charges. Use it as a monthly action list: reach out to those donors before they lapse and your predictable revenue drops.
The Bank Deposits tab maps exactly to what hits your bank account each month. Hand it to your bookkeeper or auditor to reconcile deposits against your accounting system.
Use the year-over-year comparisons to see whether you’re ahead or behind last year’s pace. The monthly trend makes it easy to model what December needs to look like to hit your annual goal.
The Account Users section gives you a monthly reminder to check who has access and when they last logged in. If someone left the organization six months ago and still has an active account, you’ll see it here.
Pulse shows which tools you’re using and which are sitting idle. If your organization runs events but hasn’t activated Click & Pay Event, or accepts donations but hasn’t tried PayQuick.ly for quick-link giving, Pulse flags it with a direct link to learn more. No guesswork — just a monthly nudge to get full value from your plan.
6. Sharing Your Dashboard
Your dashboard link is private to your organization, but it is designed to be shared with people who need to see it. There is no login wall — anyone with the link can view the dashboard. This makes it easy to share with:
- Board members who need to review financials before a meeting but shouldn’t need a Click & Pledge login.
- Accountants and auditors who need deposit reconciliation data without full system access.
- Grant officers and funders who want to see verified transaction data from a third-party source.
- Consultants and advisors working on your fundraising strategy who need current performance data.
Important: Because the link provides access without a login, treat it like a confidential document. Share it intentionally with people who have a legitimate reason to see your financial data. Do not post it publicly on your website or social media.
Both the PDF executive summary and the Excel workbook can be emailed
as attachments, uploaded to a shared drive, or printed. The PDF is a
standard document that opens anywhere; the Excel file is a standard
.xlsx that opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or any compatible
spreadsheet application.
Salesforce users: The Click & Pay Suite dashboard in Salesforce archives every Pulse report by period. Board members or finance staff with Salesforce access can download reports directly without needing the email or dashboard link.
7. Understanding Your Data
Pulse reports are built from your actual transaction records. Here are a few important concepts to keep in mind when reading your report:
Data source
Pulse draws exclusively from your Click & Pledge CONNECT transaction data. This includes all online payments processed through CONNECT as well as offline transactions (checks, cash, etc.) that were recorded in CONNECT. If your organization also uses Salesforce, be aware that gifts or pledges entered directly into Salesforce objects — outside of the Click & Pledge integration — are not reflected in Pulse. For a complete picture, ensure all transactions flow through CONNECT.
What counts as revenue?
Only approved, settled transactions are included in revenue totals. This means the payment was authorized by the card network and the funds are on their way to your bank account. Declined and blocked transactions are tracked separately in the Payment Health section — they never inflate your revenue numbers.
Settled vs. Custom transactions
“Settled” transactions are standard online card payments. “Custom” transactions represent offline entries like checks, cash, wire transfers, or invoices that were recorded in Click & Pledge manually. Both count toward your total revenue, but they are broken out separately so you can see the mix.
Trailing 12 months
Most charts and tables in Pulse cover a rolling 12-month window ending with the most recently completed month. This gives you enough history to see seasonal patterns and year-over-year trends without the noise of a single month.
Year-over-year comparisons
Where shown, year-over-year (YoY) comparisons match the same calendar month from the prior year. This is the most meaningful comparison for nonprofits, where giving is highly seasonal (e.g., December vs. December, not December vs. November).
Bank deposits vs. revenue
The Bank Deposits section (available for Stripe-connected accounts) shows the net amount deposited to your bank after processing fees. This number will always be lower than your gross revenue. The difference is the processing fee, which is also shown in the report.
8. AI Readiness Check
Every Pulse report includes an AI Readiness Check — an automated scan of your website that evaluates whether AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, and others can discover and accurately describe your organization.
This matters because a growing number of donors are using AI assistants to research causes and find organizations to support. If your website is blocking AI crawlers or missing key signals, these tools may not be able to recommend your nonprofit — even if you’re a perfect match for what someone is looking for.
The check evaluates five signals: whether AI crawlers are blocked by
your robots.txt file, whether you have a valid llms.txt
file, whether a sitemap is present, whether structured data (schema.org
markup) exists, and overall accessibility. Based on these signals, your
site receives a readiness score and a tier rating.
For a full explanation of each signal and specific guidance on how to improve your score, see the dedicated article: AI Readiness for Nonprofits — What It Is and Why It Matters.