Which donations are included in Gift Aid claims?

ExpensePlus makes claiming Gift Aid simple! As Donations management is inbuilt within ExpensePlus knows which donors are eligible for Gift Aid.

ExpensePlus also 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 - which can then be submitted to HMRC directly at the click of a button!

Here is a summary of what transactions get included:

Here is a more detailed explanation:

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

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

Note: Donations entered in the 'Donations (GASDS)' section are automatically included within GASDS claims that you make - see the separate help article about this.

2. 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

Notes:

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). Note: you can remember the donation method for recurring transactions to save having to update this each time.

3. The donor MUST have a valid GA Declaration

Donations without a valid declaration covering the donation date are excluded. Gift Aid declarations are added within the Manage Donor screen within ExpensePlus.

4. 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 eligible for Gift Aid 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.

5. 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 elegible' 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.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The 'category' a donation is recorded against has no impact on whether it's included in a Gift Aid claim or not.