Mandatory Donation Fields

If you have any mandatory fields set for donations (such as "Why Patron Gave" or other field on the Notes tab), then your online donors will need to have this field filled in for them automatically. Otherwise, they will not be able to donate online as the database will require the field, and the patron has no way of entering it. To determine which fields may be mandatory, go to:




To correct this for online sales, you have two options:


Option 1: Editing the web page (recommended)

This process includes web page editing. If you have a web designer on hand, they can perform these edits. If you wish to contract with Arts Management Systems to perform these or any customizations for you, please contact the Support Team at support@artsman.com

If you still wish those fields to be mandatory for the Box Office or Development Department, then you will need to make a slight adjustment to the tmDonationHiddenFields.html web page.

The process starts by obtaining a Sequence Value from Theatre Manager

  1. Determine which field is set to be Mandatory.


  2. In Theatre Manager, go to Setup>>System Tables>>Code Tables.
  3. Look under the Donor #1, #2, #3 pop-up (or if the field has been renamed, look under its name).
  4. Choose which value is going to be the default value.
    5. In this example, we've chosen Internet Donation.
  5. Obtain the Sequence number for that value
    6. You may have to RIGHT click on a column header to show all the available columns, and select the Sequence number. In this example, the Sequence number is 982.



Now you will need to go edit the tmDonationHiddenFields.html web page, located in the TMtemplates folder.

  1. Move a copy of the tmDonationHiddenFields.html web page into the TMtemplates folder.


  2. Open the tmDonationHiddenFields.html page and locate the following:




    3. This allows you to set a "default" value on these fields for web sales.

  3. Make the desired edits
    4. If the Sequence Number of the value you want to default to for Donation Field #1 = 982, then the line of code would look like this:

    <!-- comment: the following 3 fields are the donor popup fields on the 'notes' tab.
    If these fields have been made mandatory, then you will need to have a code table value
    for those fields for internet accepted donations. Change the value of xxx, yyy, or zzz to
    be the internal number of the appropriate popup. Also, uncomment the desired code below
    <INPUT NAME="DD_FLD1_FC_SEQ" TYPE=hidden id="DD_FLD1_FC_SEQ" value="xxx">
    <INPUT NAME="DD_FLD2_FC_SEQ" TYPE=hidden id="DD_FLD2_FC_SEQ" value="yyy">
    -->
    <INPUT NAME="DD_FLD3_FC_SEQ" TYPE=hidden id="DD_FLD3_FC_SEQ" value="982">

  4. Save the edited page in the TMtemplates folder.

Option 2: A global change

You can make the field non-mandatory. This will make the field not required for both Web Sales and in the Box Office/Development Office. To make this global change:

  1. Go to Setup >> Company Preferences >> MANDATORY DATA tab

    2. You will see a section for "Mandatory Fields on Donor Window" as noted above.

  2. Simply UNcheck the mandatory field options.