What are the different donation types and why are they important?

There are several different types of classification that correspond to donation income. 

At a basic level, you need to record donations as the following:

• Named Donation - referring to an identified donation from a known donor. This can then be used for a gift aid claim, where the donor is a UK taxpayer and you have a valid Gift Aid Declaration in place.
• GASDS Donation - referring to cash offerings, under £30 in value, recorded for gift aid purposes for the Gift Aid Small Donation Scheme. 
• Income (Other) - other donations which are neither from a named individual nor valid for GASDS purposes.

By using one of the classifications above, and by allocating them to an Income category, which is set up in category settings as recording 'Donations', ExpensePlus will correctly categorise this income as a donation for reporting purposes.

Besides the classification above, the form to record the donation income (via Bank Reconciliation / Mixed-Income) also provides the following donation types/methods, which are required for the following reasons:

• The methods 'Bank Transfer', 'Cash', 'Cheque', 'Card' and 'Online' are just helpful identifiers for audit purposes. 
• The method 'ChurchSuite' signifies that the donation was made through the ChurchSuite management system. Churches who use this system are likely to record and claim their gift aid within ChurchSuite. Therefore, to avoid the potential for duplicate claims, ExpensePlus will omit any donation reconciled with the method 'ChurchSuite' from any exports (from ExpensePlus to ChurchSuite) when produced using our 'Export to ChurchSuite' function. This is because ChurchSuite already knows about the transaction. 
• The methods 'Stewardship', 'CAF', 'Impact Vouchers', 'Charities Trust', 'GAYE scheme', 'Parish Giving Scheme', 'Virgin Giving' and 'GIVT' refer to commonly used donation schemes which are received inclusive of gift aid recovered. With this in mind, ExpensePlus still needs to know about the income for accounting purposes, (and if using ChurchSuite, you will want ChurchSuite to know about the donation for analysis and reporting purposes), however, it must be excluded from gift aid claims. Classification with these methods automatically overrides its potential for GA to be claimed, even when allocated to a named donor with a GA declaration.