How do I create a Gift Aid Claim?
ExpensePlus keeps track of which transactions are eligible for Gift Aid - Click here to find out more about this.
Claiming a claim
To create and submit a claim, click the ‘create claim’ button at the top of the Gift Aid screen and select the claim you wish to create. Give your claim a name, add any adjustments that might be needed e.g. because Gift Aid has been previously overclaimed), then click 'create claim' and 'confirm'.
ExpensePlus creates separate claims for each fund (which makes it easy to correctly allocate income from HMRC to the fund it relates to). GASDS claims are also separate, to make it easy to track how much money has been claimed.
Excluding Donations from a claim
Should you wish to exclude a donation from a claim, when creating the claim, either unselect the transaction (the donation will still be eligible to be part of a future claim you create) OR exclude it permanently (you should only do this, for example, where a donor is eligible for Gift Aid, but they have asked you to exclude certain gifts).
If a donor is no longer eligible for Gift Aid, then instead of excluding their donations from a claim, you should instead set end dates for any active Gift Aid declaration the donor has - click here to find out how to do this.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why are no claims showing as being able to be claimed?
If you are getting started with ExpensePlus, then typically the reason no claims are showing will either be that (a) you haven't reconciled any income transactions as 'Named Donations' yet OR that you have done this, but are yet to add any Gift Aid declaration details for your donors within the Manage Donor Screen.
ExpensePlus automatically generates claims for you which you can then check and submit directly to HMRC at the click of a button. For a full run-down of what donations are included within Gift Aid claims, click here.
Why are donations grouped by fund?
When a donor gives a restricted donation, HMRC is clear that the Gift Aid relating to the gift must be allocated to the same restricted fund (unless a donor specifically consents otherwise).
Therefore, to make it easy to allocate Gift Aid when it arrives in from HMRC to the correct fund (and to accrue correctly for Gift Aid related to each fund), ExpensePlus splits up Gift Aid claims per fund.
Note: Claiming Gift Aid is super quick to do within ExpensePlus, and HMRC do not have any limits on the number of claims submitted, so actually combining claims across funds not only takes extra effort, but it also then requires you to split the income when you come to reconcile it (so we recommend you DON'T try to manually do this).
How do I know if a donor has paid sufficient tax?
It is the donor's responsibility to ensure they have paid sufficient tax (not your church or charity), so as long as you have a valid donor declaration form for a donor and you've added this to ExpensePlus, ExpensePlus will automatically include for you all donations that are eligible) when you create a Gift Aid claim.
Typically, most donors however that pay tax will have paid sufficient tax unless they have:
(a) given a very large one-off financial gift (where this happens, you can just exclude this donation when creating a claim), OR
(b) they only earn just above the tax threshold.
Example: If Bob Jones gives £100 per month (£1,200 over a tax year). This will enable you to claim £300 of Gift Aid over a tax year. As long as Bob Jones has paid £300 of income tax or capital gains tax in that tax year, then this will be sufficient to claim Gift Aid on all of his donations (note: in the unlikely event that Bob Jones only paid £300 tax in a tax year, and he also gave donations that were Gift Aided to other charities, then he would also need to be taken into account). The point of this example is to show that for most donors, if they pay tax, then in 99+% of cases will have paid sufficient tax to Gift Aid the donations they give.
Some churches and charities send donors a statement at the end of each tax year, which provides a summary of the donations they have given. Within the donor reports screen in ExpensePlus, you will find an option to Generate Donor Statements along with an option to download donor mailmerge data to create customised donor letters.
Why are named donations grouped 'per financial year'?
Whilst whether someone is eligible to Gift Aid is dependent on the amount of tax they have paid within the tax year (see the answer to the question above), when creating claims it's more helpful to most churches and charities to group claims by financial year as this allows - thus why named donations are grouped 'per financial year', rather than by tax year. This enables:
- Easy claiming, accruing and reporting of Gift Aid per financial month, which most churches and charities do (rather than starting from the 6th of April)
- It avoids having to create two claims in April (if working from the 6th of April, two claims per fund would need to be created for the month of April as it spans two tax years)