Hi, creators! Here’s a quick update regarding Patron Relationship Manager. You may have already noticed, but the features that many of you have been requesting are now available in Patron Relationship Manager.
Now, you have the ability to:
Mark patrons complete and filter by completion status
Message selected groups or individual patrons
Select and filter patrons by multiple tiers
See patron email address in the list
Search all patrons by email address and name
See max pledge limits for patrons (for per-creation creators)
View newest patrons at the top of the list (sorted by Patron Since)
We’re still working on a few additional changes that will be coming soon, including the ability to see more results per page, the ability to filter by deleted payment status, and updates to csv data. In addition to the feedback on this thread, we’ve also surveyed creators to find additional ways to improve your experience and we will be providing more updates regarding new features coming soon.
Now that you’ve got these new tools, we’ve compiled a list of common actions and how-to’s linked below.
Given that you are still working on adding back features we had, why did you still go ahead and remove the old Patron Manager? Some of us still needed the functionality that was there.
By the way, why would someone be “last charged” July 1, but have no transaction in their payment history for July 1. Person in question has a DELETED payment status and is a former Patron. (Looks like the ended support after processing started.) Shouldn’t that last charge be June 1?
I’m really stressed to know the Patreon Manager page is going away. I rely on it to fill print orders for the previous month, like others I’ve seen posting here. The Relationship Manager is hugely flawed.
You can sort by month, but because it shows subscribers based on what they are CURRENTLY subscribed to, some past paid pledges don’t show up when you have the ‘PAID’ category selected because they aren’t still subscribed to that tier.
You have to make sure to have ‘ALL CHARGE STATUSES’ selected and it still looks confusing because you see what their current $ level is next to their name. My pledges change their pledge levels constantly, so using the Relationship Manager is awful in comparison to the Patreon Manager.
I want a snapshot at the end of the month that I can trust shows what people paid during that month. I simply can not do that with the Relationship Manager. Now I won’t be certain I’m sending out the right things to the right people.
You have to be VERY careful how you filter things or you could end up not sending out rewards to people who paid for it. So, yeah, I hate this change.
Hi @DysonLogos, thanks for the feedback – we’ve logged it and will be sharing it with our team.
In the new Patron Relationship Manager, you can gather the amount pledged per creation by downloading the CSV for a particular post and summing the Pledge amount in the column to get $X pledged and then view the total patron number for the post as the “attempted to bill X patrons”.
A few quick updates for you. As a reminder, our team is actively working on improving these tools, here are some updates:
Updates(livenow):
When you filter by specific post or month, the Pledge amount listed per patron reflects the amount the patron pledged for that specific post or month
Deleted status is now included in the Charge Status filter options
Working on:
Making data available regarding specific post/month stats (including total pledge amount (not just amount collected) by post and month). If you’re interested in providing more direct feedback about this/previewing upcoming changes, please click here.
Our team is actively reviewing your feedback as we continue to make improvements. More updates coming soon!
I have to agree with those that are unhappy with the old Patron Manager being removed; I was willing to give the new one a shot, but being unable to select specific Patrons, along with a far less-intuitive interface now added time to my workflow instead of streamlining it further.
Also, when I select a tier and message them, I’m being told that not all of the messages go through. Coincidentally, the 5 out of 14 people who confirmed receiving the message are the first 5 in order on the Patron Manager, so there is something going on there, it seems.
Color-coding the status helped assess things at a glance (green/paid, red/declined, black/processing), and being able to select certain members made things a great deal easier as well.
Having completely separate links to each month also reduced the chance of making mistakes and accidentally sending Goods out to those that were not eligible.
Are these features that will be re-added to the new Patron Manager in a timely manner?
I understand that the new Manager needs time to be improved upon, but until all features are fully-functioning, it would have been kinder to leave the old version up and running until then.
EDIT: Saw that the selecting of individuals have been reintegrated
I am incredibly disappointed that the old Patreon Manager was removed.
As someone who has hundreds of patrons pledged to my page each month - removing the old manager will make my job absolutely more difficult in managing my community.
For some perspective:
The old manager was most effective because it layout out all my patreons divided by what tiers they are in within one page. It was a quick one page that contained every bit of info that I needed to effectively run my business. It was easy to tell who’s payment went through vs who declined. I could easily search through it for any patrons who recently updated/changed their pledge by doing a quick F3 search function for today’s date. I personally feel communication is extremely important to running a successful patreon - so I always make sure to welcome anyone new. The old Manager allowed me to sort through the list and message those new patrons very easily.
The only times I used the new manager was to look up people individually.
The new manager doesn’t give creators an easy why to see their community as a whole and it forces them to go through every person one by one to see if anyone has made changes to their pledges or if declined pledges go through later in the month which adds hours to something that already takes a fair amount of time. Time that creators could be using to create content.
In other words - the old manager worked extremely well for looking at the community as a whole.
Newer one works better if you are looking for individuals.
Why not give creators the ability to have both the old and the new manager.
I noticed you added the checkbox for selecting everyone in the list, which is great. But since the list only has 50 patrons listed per page, I only seem to be able to select 50 at a time. I would like to be able to select everyone and mark them as completed with only a couple of clicks like I used to be able to in the old Patron Manager, instead of spending five minutes going through dozens of pages one at a time.
Aaaaand the Patreon Manager doesn’t match up with the Benefits list. No idea how things can be marked complete either. Probably not the best idea to take away the working manager before all the fixes were live.
I have the same issue, this functionality is now behind a tedious process of going into relationship manager, filtering by a post, downloading CSV, Extra step if you dont have Excel is to upload it through google sheets, then change the format of that collumn for it to even sum properly, then use the sum function in the csv to finally get a number, I bet there are plenty of people that have no idea how to even do that… something that was previously just visible instantly with one click… is now behind a 5minute long tedious process, can you please fix this
I have to agree; thank you for reintegrating the checkbox selection, but please allow us to also see ALL of our Patrons at once.
This will help streamline things such as messaging a large group of Patrons at once, instead of selecting->messaging->copy/paste message->send->click to next page->selecting->pasting->sending->etc
@Patreon Staff: Could we at least be told why the sudden desire to lock out the old Patron Manager and force everyone to use the new one? Were there complaints about the old ones that I’m just not seeing? Financial/workload hassle with maintaining the old one?
It’s frustrating for many Creators to be forced to do something that is new and very-much-not-improved without at least a solid explanation as to the decision-making, especially when it was a decision that we were not given a say in.
another important feature is that we need the ability to select multiple charge statuses.
it looks like it’s only possible to view either ‘paid’ OR ‘deleted’ OR ‘refunded’. but patrons who deleted their pledges still got charged at the beginning of the month, so i still need to be able to email rewards to them along with the paid patrons.
echoing what a lot of folks are saying here: if this “new and improved” manager wasn’t ready, why did you revoke access to the old one? it’s just making it harder to use the most BASIC functions of this website. and it takes us 10x longer too. we’re! so! frustrated!
Yes please! I didn’t know I could miss a feature so much, it’s terrible to have to scroll over many conversations just to find the latest one you had with a person or having to click on message and opening a new one.
I miss the “show addresses” button. I mail physical rewards every month and it was very convenient to have the option to view all patron’s shipping addresses on one page without having to click on each individual patron’s name or download CSV.
Now it is very time consuming to click on every individual patron(hundreds of them) or download a CSV(messy) to see their shipping address. It was easier before with the “show addresses” button. That button also made it easier to quickly search for someone’s recipient name if mail goes missing or is returned.
The only other place that currently allows you to view everyone’s addresses all on one page is on the Benefits page, but on the benefits page I cant choose which month to view specifically so it’s useless to me.
As everyone else has said, the old Patron Manager was just so easy. Everything was on one page, everything was accessible from that one page, everything was sortable and clickable from that one page. Still don’t understand the purpose of these changes…
This hasnt been fixed, Bumped because i just experienced this again.
New $15 Patron i just got was marked COMPLETED and Others do not show up on the new relationship manager and i have to check my gmail to try to confirm and double check MANY MANY TIMES.
And when I choose ‘deleted’ as a status, I get no results, despite knowing I’ve had people delete their pledges. I tried various combinations of options and it always comes up blank.
Hey folks, thanks for all the feedback and thoughts around this decision.
First off, please know that we’re reading and taking in all this feedback. As there are over 120 comments, we’re not able to respond to each one individually but there are a lot of Patreon teammates reading every comment and digging in deeper to capture this feedback and make PRM better. We know there are growing pains and learning curves involved in getting used to a new tool and we understand the frustrations.
I’ve heard a few main themes from creators over the past 2 weeks that I’d like to take a moment to address and hopefully clear up some things.
Why are you making these changes now?
For years, we’ve received clear and consistent feedback from creators that Patron Manager (PM) and Patron Relationship Manager (PRM) aren’t as useful as they should be. Creators are looking for better filtering, more searchable data, additional data points (like t-shirt size), a better mobile experience, and more. We want this too! In order to bring those improvements to life, it’s vital that we consolidate the multiple, older tools into one central tool to ensure we can add new features as quickly as possible. Merging these tools together clears the path for a series of improvements related to benefit delivery coming soon. And, importantly, we want to preserve the key functionality you currently use to run your business when we merge these tools together.
What’s the difference between PM and PRM?
Patron Relationship Manager is a little different from Patron Manager because it shows up-to-date, real-time data so you can see your newest patrons at a glance. The old data (or previous month’s data) is still there and accurate. You’ll select the old or previous billing cycle (ie June 2020). By selecting this billing cycle, you can see the patron, the pledge amount they were billed for, and therefore know which benefits to offer based on the previous month’s pledge. To learn more about how PRM is used to complete the tasks you did in PM, here’s a really helpful HC article that shows you how to use it.
I don’t feel like we’re being heard
We’re putting together an advisory group of creators who will get early access and sneak peeks into features and tools coming soon—please join us! If there’s a particular feature or workflow you’d love for Patreon to support, this is your way to work directly with the people who are building your tools. We’ll be reaching out to this advisory group regularly with opportunities to provide feedback on new prototypes and ideas. We want you along for the journey! The time commitment is minimal and we’ll work around your schedule if you’re interested in working more directly with us.
I really hope that helps, and keep the feedback coming! We’re here and will continue to work hard to make PRM awesome for you. Thank you
Two quick improvements that would help with CSV exporting and importing into spreadsheet programs:
Quote Text Columns – Any commas in the text fields currently break the CSV imports and have to be manually corrected. This can be (mostly) fixed by either quoting text columns in double-quotes and/or escaping commas in text fields (,). Double-quotes in text fields can be similarly escaped by double-quotes.
Remove ‘$’ Prefixes – This causes issues with some spreadsheet imports which considers the column as text instead of number. A simple 2-decimal floating point number like “25.00” would work fine.
But since the list only has 50 patrons listed per page, I only seem to be able to select 50 at a time. I would like to be able to select everyone and mark them as completed with only a couple of clicks like I used to be able to in the old Patron Manager, instead of spending five minutes going through dozens of pages one at a time.
