Which donations are included in Gift Aid claims?

ExpensePlus makes claiming Gift Aid simple! This article explains which donations are included in Gift Aid claims through ExpensePlus.

Because of the way you record donations in ExpensePlus, it knows which donations are eligible for Gift Aid. 

ExpensePlus records which income transactions are named donations, and which donation method was used. This enables ExpensePlus to automatically and accurately generate Gift Aid claims for you.

You can then submit these to HMRC directly, at the click of a button!

Transactions that are eligible for Gift Aid

The 'transaction type' MUST be set as 'Named Donations'

Event income, invoice income, and other income will never be included. 

Donations coded as 'GASDS Donation' are automatically included within GASDS claims that you make - please see our separate help article for more information about this.

The 'donation method' MUST not be a method where Gift Aid is pre-handled outside of ExpensePlus

Donations processed by 3rd parties that offer the ability to claim Gift Aid on your behalf are excluded, to avoid the risk of Gift Aid being claimed again.

• All Card Payment Processors (e.g. SumUp) except those explicitly listed above, will default to the donation method of 'Card' (and be eligible for Gift Aid if all other criteria are satisfied).
• All donations made via ChurchSuite (but collected via Stripe/GoCardless) will default to the donation method of 'ChurchSuite' (and will be excluded from Gift Aid claims).
• If you use a 3rd Party listed above in the red list, but do not use their ability to claim Gift Aid on your behalf and wish instead to claim Gift Aid within ExpensePlus, then you should set the donation method for such donations to 'Card' (so they are eligible for Gift Aid if all other criteria are satisfied).

The donor MUST have a valid Gift Aid declaration

The transaction MUST NOT have been manually 'excluded' or already be part of another claim

It's not possible for the same donation to be included in a Gift Aid claim if it's already part of another Gift Aid claim.

Donations can be manually excluded when creating a Gift Aid claim using the 'exclude' button to the right of the create claim screen within ExpensePlus.

The transaction MUST NOT be allocated to a fund for which Gift Aid is set to 'Not Eligible'

Within the Fund Settings screen you can set a fund as 'not eligible' for Gift Aid, which means even if all of the above criteria are satisfied, donations into that fund won't get included for Gift Aid.

For example, if you have a fund into which people give money that gets passed on to an external charity, or perhaps for a leaving collection, then typically you would want to set this fund as 'not eligible' for Gift Aid.

To better understand the Gift Aid module, please view the module overview video here.