Understanding donation statuses

Every donation in your dashboard carries a status. The status determines whether the gift counts toward your campaign total, whether it appears on your public page, and what actions are available. Here's the full map.

The golden rule

Only Approved donations count. Your campaign total, team totals, progress bar, and public donations feed include Approved donations and nothing else. Every other status exists so you have a complete, honest history.

The statuses

Approved

The payment succeeded (or, for a manual entry, you confirmed the money is in hand). Counts toward all totals, shows in the public feed, and is eligible for a receipt. This is the only status a receipt can be sent for, and the only status that can be refunded.

Pending

The gift isn't final yet. This happens when:

• An online payment method takes time to clear (some bank-based methods take a few business days). It flips to Approved automatically when the processor confirms — or to Failed if it doesn't.
• You recorded a manual donation as Pending — for example, a pledged check you haven't received. Edit it to Approved when the money arrives.

Pending gifts don't count toward totals and don't appear publicly.

Failed

The payment didn't go through — a declined card or a manual entry you marked as failed. Kept for your records; never counted. (A checkout the donor simply walked away from isn't a failure — those live in the separate Abandoned view.)

Refunded

The full gift was returned to the donor. For Stripe donations, the dashboard refund action itself moves the money back; for other online donations the record is marked Refunded here while the actual refund is issued at your payment gateway (Pledgix syncs it automatically); for offline gifts it's a bookkeeping mark. Removed from your totals and the public feed the moment the status changes. See Refunds — what happens when you refund a donation.

Partially Refunded

Part of the charge was returned at the payment processor. Your totals are adjusted for the refunded portion automatically.

Disputed

The donor's bank has opened an inquiry into the charge. The donation is flagged while the dispute is resolved. Donations under dispute can't be refunded from the dashboard until the dispute closes.

Charged Back

The donor's bank reversed the charge after a dispute. Removed from your totals automatically.

Voided

A charity-card (DAF) gift that was reversed — the grant is voided with the charity fund that issued it. Treated like a refund: removed from your totals and the public feed.

Pending Verification

Seen on Donary donations that are awaiting confirmation. The row is recorded but not final until it's verified.

Refund, dispute, and chargeback statuses driven by the payment processor update on their own — no action needed from you for your records to stay accurate.

Where each status lives in your dashboard

Your Donations tab is split into views:

• Successful — all Approved donations. This is your real fundraising.
• Pending / Failed / Refunds — pending, failed, refunded, disputed, and voided rows in one place, so they never clutter your main list but are always a click away.
• Abandoned — checkouts a donor started but walked away from without a payment being attempted (declined payments stay under the Failed view, never here). A great follow-up list; failed and abandoned rows even show a "Possible successful match found" hint when the same donor did eventually give.
• Matching — appears on campaigns with match pools enabled, showing sponsor-matching activity.

Each tab shows its count, and the status filter narrows the view further.

Status changes you can make yourself

With donation-editing permission you can move a manual or imported donation between Approved, Pending, and Refunded when editing it (a spreadsheet import can also bring rows in as Failed). Online donations have their status locked — it changes through the refund action or automatic processor updates instead (and for Stripe gifts, the refund action is what actually returns the money). Totals recalculate instantly with every change.

Tip: If your total looks "off," check the Pending / Failed / Refunds tab before anything else. Nine times out of ten, the "missing" donation is sitting there as Pending — a payment still clearing, or a manual entry waiting to be approved.