Does ExpensePlus support donations from Couples?

Often, a single donation received via a monthly standing order may represent the giving of a couple or a household. For example, John and Jane Bloggs may give an aggregate total of £200 a month to your church or charity but as a single payment. 

Where this is the case, you can choose to match these income transactions with a Named Donor name including both members of the couple. You can manage your donor names in the Manage Donors screen. 

By matching this Donor Name to your standing order reference, all future transactions will be quick matched to the 'couple'.

If you add a Gift Aid declaration to this 'couple' the declaration will need to be in the name of just one individual. Gift Aid declarations are always in the name of a unique individual and cannot cover a household or couple. This is an HMRC requirement and usually suffices for incoming donations. After all, on most occasions, it doesn't matter for Gift Aid purposes how the '£200' donation is internally split within their household finances, as long as the individual donor responsible for the donation and the gift aid declaration has paid sufficient tax for this purpose. 

If you do need to split the incoming donation between each individual person from the couple, you should set up each person as a separate Named Donor, with their own gift aid declarations as appropriate. Then reconcile the incoming standing order (or other donation methods) using the Mixed-Income wizard.

Please note, you may need to delete the Memorised Transaction relating to the Standing Order if you are moving from allocating the donation from one Named Donor to two.