Open next year's edition of a dharma event

Who can do this Owner, Admin

Opening next year’s edition copies a dharma event’s setup — offerings, tiers, tablet templates, dates shifted forward a year — into a new Draft campaign, while this year’s donations, receipts and tablets stay exactly where they are.

Before you start

• This only applies to Dharma Event campaigns — see Choose a campaign type. A Regular Campaign has nothing to roll over.
• The campaign must already be published at least once — a Draft has no edition to roll over yet.
• Many annual ceremonies sell across the calendar year boundary — a 長年燈 Annual Light lamp sold December through November, for example. It’s normal, and expected, for last year’s edition to still be taking donations when you open next year’s. DonorCARE is built for that: see “Running two editions at once” below.

Steps

1. Open the campaign and find “Roll Over to {year}”. Where it sits depends on whether this year’s edition has finished:

   • If it’s marked Completed, or its end date has already passed (DonorCARE flips the status overnight once that happens), Roll Over to {year} is the main action in the campaign header.
   • If it’s still Published and running, the same action is tucked into the ⋯ (more) menu instead — a deliberately quieter spot, since opening next year while this year is still live is a considered choice, not a routine one.

2. Select “Roll Over to {year}”. DonorCARE works out the year itself — the next year that doesn’t already have an edition in this ceremony’s series — so there’s no year field to fill in. A new campaign is created immediately, in Draft, with the year added to its name so the two editions are easy to tell apart in your campaigns list and on receipts.

3. Check what came across. The new edition starts with its own copies of everything the ceremony needs: every offering, pricing tier, ritual and donation item, its FAQs, all its settings and descriptions, its hero and gallery images (copied as the new edition’s own files, so replacing one next year never touches this year’s page), the tablet template each tier prints on, its place in your public website’s sections, and which ceremony grid it maps to on your receipt template. Its start and end dates are last year’s, shifted forward by one year.

   Donations, receipts, tablets and registrations do not come across — those belong to the year they were given in and stay on the edition that collected them. Every counter on the new edition starts at zero.

4. Review the new edition’s dates and prices. DonorCARE shifts the dates forward a year automatically, but confirm they’re right — and update any pricing tier that’s changing for the new year — before you publish.

5. Publish the new edition when it’s ready — see Publish a campaign. Until then, donors can’t see or give to it.

Running two editions at once

Do

• Leave last year’s edition exactly as it is while you set up next year’s — publishing the new Draft doesn’t change or stop the one still running.
• Expect both editions to be live together once you publish: donors will see the edition year on each one’s page and card, so they can tell them apart.

Don’t

• Don’t wait for last year’s edition to finish before opening next year’s — for a ceremony that sells across the year boundary, that would leave a gap with nothing to donate to.
• Don’t expect a year-over-year comparison until the new edition is actually created — DonorCARE links the two by an event series tag (活动系列) that only exists once a rollover has happened.

Roll over your whole year-end at once

If several ceremonies are due for a new edition around the same time, open Campaigns and select Year-end rollover. It shows every eligible campaign and the year each one will become, with a tick box next to each. Editions that are still running are left unticked by default, so you choose which ones to open now rather than rolling everything over at once by accident. Tick the ones you want and confirm to roll them all over together.

If something goes wrong

What you see	What it means	What to do
There’s no “Roll Over to {year}” button in the header	The current edition is still running, so the action sits in the quieter ⋯ menu rather than the header	Open the ⋯ menu on the campaign — it’s there, labelled with next year
No roll-over action anywhere, in the header or the ⋯ menu	The campaign is a Regular Campaign rather than a Dharma Event, or it’s still a Draft — a Draft has no edition to roll over	Check the campaign type; if it’s a Draft, publish it first
“Every year is already taken”	An edition already exists for the year DonorCARE would have chosen, and for the years after it	Open that edition instead — this ceremony has most likely been rolled over already, by you or a colleague
“Edition year conflict — needs manual fix”	This campaign has no event series tag yet, and tagging it would collide with another campaign that already holds that series for this year	Open 年份 Edition Year and 活动系列 Event Series on both campaigns and give this one its own series name, then roll it over
The new edition doesn’t show up on your website	A rolled-over edition is created as a Draft, and a Draft is never public	Review it, then publish it — see Publish a campaign
The new edition’s tablets look wrong, or changing one affects last year’s sheets	The new edition prints on the same tablet template as last year’s, by design, so both stay consistent	If this year’s sheet genuinely needs to differ, duplicate the template first and point the new edition at the copy — see Design a tablet template — rather than editing the shared template, which changes how last year’s sheets re-print too

Related

• Choose a campaign type
• Run a dharma event
• Publish a campaign
• Read campaign analytics
• Design a tablet template