The setup checklist

A new installation opens on the home page with a checklist at the top. It is the fastest route to a working system, and it ticks itself off as you complete each step.

The Setup Tasks To Get Started card showing an empty progress bar reading 0 of 8 complete, above eight unticked steps beginning with Confirm Locale slash Currency

The eight steps

#	Step	Why it is here
1	Confirm Locale / Currency	Everything monetary depends on it, and it is awkward to change once money is recorded
2	Confirm Database Backup Criteria	Your data lives on this computer; backups are your responsibility
3	Add Organization Information	Appears on every receipt and letter you generate
4	Create A Designation	The fund a gift can be given to
5	Create A Campaign	The drive a gift belongs to
6	Create An Appeal	The ask that produced it
7	Add Your First Donor	Someone to attribute a gift to
8	Record Your First Donation Or Pledge	Either one completes this step

Each row is a link to the view that completes it.

Why this order

Steps 4 to 6 come before step 8 deliberately. Once a designation, campaign and appeal exist, your very first gift can be attributed properly instead of being recorded as an unassigned amount that no report can place.

If you are moving from another system

Steps 7 and 8 do not have to be done by hand. If your donors and this year's gifts are already in a spreadsheet or an export from another donor system, import them:

Finish steps 1 to 6 first. Do not skip this. A gift cannot be attributed to a fund that does not exist yet, and importing first means matching your file against an empty list — so every fund in it is offered for creation, named exactly as the old system spelled it.
Import your donors.
Import this year's gifts, leaving the already receipted box ticked so Mich does not ask you to re-receipt a year of gifts.
Check one number — your year-to-date total — against the old system before you rely on it.

The import can create funds, drop-down values and custom fields as it goes, and an undo will not remove those even though it removes the imported records. That is one more reason to set up steps 4 to 6 the way you want them first: anything the import invents is yours to tidy up afterwards.