The Scenario
You are the executive director of a nonprofit. The annual board meeting is in three weeks and the finance committee wants a recurring-giving retention report in the organization's Excel finance template: every active recurring plan, the donor name and email, the plan amount and frequency, and the estimated annual value.
Givebutter has 120 active recurring plans. You have never exported this data before.
The slow version:
- Navigate to Givebutter's recurring plans list
- Click each plan, note donor name, amount, frequency
- Switch to the Excel workbook, type the record in
- Realize "monthly $25" and "annual $300" are not comparable without computing annualized values
- Start over, try to calculate monthly × 12 in your head for 120 plans
- Hand the finance committee a 74-row workbook with no annual value column and a note saying "more to come."
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that fetches all recurring plans from Givebutter, computes the annual value, and writes the full report in one operation.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Fetch all recurring giving plans from Givebutter and write them into the Recurring Plans tab of this workbook with columns: plan ID, donor name, email, amount, frequency, start date, and estimated annual value. Calculate estimated annual value as amount × payments per year (monthly = 12, quarterly = 4, weekly = 52, annual = 1). Sort by estimated annual value descending.
SheetXAI calls Givebutter's API, pulls all 120 active plans, computes the annual value per plan based on frequency, sorts the list, and writes everything to the Recurring Plans tab. The retention report is ready before your prep call with the committee chair.
What You Get
A complete recurring plan report in the Recurring Plans tab:
- All 120 plans — no scrolling, no missed records
- Plan ID, donor name, email, amount, frequency, start date — full context per plan
- Estimated annual value — correctly calculated per frequency, so monthly and annual plans are directly comparable
- Sorted by annual value descending — your most valuable recurring donors at the top
The finance committee gets the retention picture they asked for, without anyone clicking through individual plan records in Givebutter.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Recurring plan exports from Givebutter have a few consistent wrinkles.
When frequency values are formatted inconsistently
Some plans come back as "monthly," others "MONTHLY," others "month." The annual value calculation breaks if frequency is not normalized.
Fetch all Givebutter recurring plans into the Recurring Plans tab. Normalize the frequency column so all monthly variations read 'monthly', quarterly as 'quarterly', and so on. Then calculate estimated annual value per plan and sort by that column descending.
When you need to separate active plans from paused ones
Not every plan pulled from Givebutter will be actively charging.
Fetch all Givebutter recurring plans. Write active plans into a tab called 'Active Recurring' with all standard columns plus estimated annual value. Write paused plans into a tab called 'Paused Recurring' with plan ID, donor name, email, and the date the plan was paused.
When the board letter needs the top 10 recurring donors called out specifically
The ED wants to personally acknowledge the top 10 recurring donors by annual value.
Fetch all Givebutter recurring plans. Identify the top 10 by estimated annual value. Write just those 10 into the Top Recurring tab with donor name, email, amount, frequency, and annual value. Format the annual value column as currency.
When the finance committee wants a combined view of recurring and one-time giving per donor
The retention report should show each recurring donor's total one-time giving as well, so the committee can identify who deserves upgraded stewardship.
Fetch all Givebutter recurring plans and list them in the Recurring Plans tab with the standard columns plus estimated annual value. For each recurring donor, also pull their total one-time giving from Givebutter and write it into a column called 'One-Time Lifetime Total'. Add a final column called 'Combined Annual Estimate' that sums the recurring annual value and one-time lifetime total divided by years since first gift.
The pattern: the first prompt gets the foundation; the fuller prompts layer in context from the rest of Givebutter so the board sees the complete retention picture.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and ask it to pull your Givebutter recurring plans into an Excel workbook. The Givebutter integration is included in every plan. For related workflows, see how to export donation transactions into an Excel workbook or the Givebutter in Excel overview.