Q:

Struggling: Search report for donations by creation date not receive date

I want to send thank you letters and gift aid forms to everyone who 'created' a contribution donation (not membership contribution) within a period of a few months, a one off or recurring donation with us. I can only seem to get results with received date, which might be fine for the one-off donations, but not for recurring ones, as we receive them every month. It seems that neither the Search builder nor Find Contributions can create a report with the 'created date'. Any thoughts? Am I missing something, or is this not available? 

A:

Yes, there is no such field in contribution table that holds when a contribution record was actually created. However an activity is created when a contribution is recorded with status completed. If contribution is created with pending status and updated later after day or 2 then it is very difficult to track via Activity.
I have an extension that uses activity to get created date and display on a Civi Contribution Detail report. 
The alternate way of doing this would be create a date custom field for contribution, auto populate the field with now() using buildform or post hook.
HTH
Pradeep

A:

You will need to do two searches.
First, use the Recurring Contributions Report (/civicrm/report/contribute/recur).

Filter by "Start Date".
Optionally, filter by Financial Type or any other criteria you want (for example, to exclude membership-related contributions).
Refresh the results.
Add the found contacts to a "People to Thank" group.

Then, do an Advanced Search.

Open the Contributions accordion tab.
Filter by "Date Received".
Check "No" next to "Contribution is Recurring?".
Optionally, filter by Financial Type or any other criteria you want (for example, to exclude membership-related contributions).
Run the search.
Add the found contacts to your "People to Thank" group.

Now, your "People to Thank" group contains everyone who started a recurring contribution plus everyone who made a one-time donation in the specified timeframe.

