How to reconcile Charities Trust Income

This help guide article covers how to reconcile Charities Trust Income.

Within ExpensePlus there are 2 choices for how to reconcile Charities Trust Income (you will need to pick the one that will work best for you):

Option 1: Splitting payouts against donors manually using the 'mixed income' option - This is typically the best and quickest option where you have only a few people who give via Charities Trust since it involves manually recording the different donations given that make up the payout received each time.
Option 2: Splitting payouts against donors automatically by uploading payout transactions - This option is typically best where you have more than 5 people giving with Charities Trust as it saves having to manually record donations.

IMPORTANT: You should not reconcile payouts from Charities Trust as either 'Named Donation' or 'Income Received' as admin fees are charged - so recording the net amount that arrives in your bank account simply as income is incorrect from an accounting perspective. Instead, choose one of the above options - both of which enable you to ensure the gross amount of income collected via Charities Trust is recorded as income, and the Charities Trust transaction fees are correctly recorded as expenditure.

Option 1: Splitting payouts against support donors manually using the 'mixed income' option

Note: you will need to add Charities Trust as a donation method - click here to find out how to do this.

Reconciling Charities Trust payouts on your bank statement

When reconciling your uploaded bank transactions, select the payout from Charities Trust on the left-hand table of your match transactions screen, click the + button and then within the popup that appears select the transaction type as 'Mixed Income'.

Within the 'Enter Mixed Income' screen, enter the details for the transactions in the Charities Trust payout:

Named Donations - for any named donations
Less Expenditure - for the total of the fees deducted

IMPORTANT: When reconciling Charities Trust donations:

(1) You should always ensure the 'donation method' is set to 'Charities Trust'

(2) You should not record any donations as 'GASDS Donations'

Note: where donors give anonymously, you may wish to create a donor called 'Anonymous Charities Trust Donations'

Option 2: Splitting payouts against support donors automatically by uploading payout transactions

Reconciling Charities Trust payouts appearing on your main bank account statement

When you reconcile your uploaded bank transactions, select the payout from Charities Trust on the left-hand table of your match transactions screen.

Click the + button that appears next to the transaction, and in the popup that then appears, select the transaction type as 'Payout from Payment Processor', and then select your Charities Trust account.

Note: you will need to set up Charities Trust as a payment processor account before you can do this - click here to find out how to do this.

Note: This will temporarily make your account balance of your Charities Trust go negative (it should have been zero previously).

Downloading Charities Trust transactions

Go to Charity Statements Login Page to sign in to your account

Click on 'statements' and select either:

(a) 'Payroll Giving donations and Charity Cheques', or

(b) 'Donations from all other sources'.

Select the criteria (as shown above), then click 'Download statement' and choose either to export either as .xls or .csv

Importing Charities Trust transactions

Within the bank reconciliation screen, select your Charities Trust account and click 'upload transactions'.

The upload process works similarly to a regular bank account, except that, each line on the statement will show as two transactions within ExpensePlus - one relating to the income and the other to the transaction fee deducted.

NOTE: As Charities Trust transaction files do not include a date column, you will be asked to select a date when uploading your transaction file. This will be used as the donation date for all transactions within the file you upload.

Once payout transactions are uploaded, your Charities Trust account balance should return to zero (because the net total of the transactions in the payout report you've just uploaded IN to this account should exactly match the amount paid OUT as the payout went from this account into your bank account).

IMPORTANT NOTE: If your latest account balance within ExpensePlus for your Charities Trust account is not zero we highly recommend you fix this issue BEFORE you reconcile transactions - please see this separate helpguide article

Reconciling Charities Trust transactions

The bank matching process works similarly to a regular bank account, with the ability to remember and quick match transactions.

This means that once you have reconciled Charities Trust transactions for the first month, you won't need to manually enter transactions for future months - but simply click the 'quick match income' button at the top of the match transactions screen.

Where transactions haven't been previously reconciled and auto-remembered:

Named Donations

(1) select the transaction in the left-hand table of the match transactions screen;

(2) click the '+' button to the right of the transaction;

(3) select the 'Named Donation' option in the popup and enter the details.

IMPORTANT: When reconciling Charities Trust donations:

(1) You should always ensure the 'donation method' is set to 'Charities Trust'

(2) You should not record any donations as 'GASDS Donations'

Note: where donors give anonymously, you may wish to create a donor called 'Anonymous Charities Trust Donations'

Card/Payment Process Fee

To reconcile Charities Trust fees:

(1) select the transaction in the left-hand table of the match transactions screen

(2) click the '+' button to the right of the transaction

(3) select the 'Card/Payment Processor Fee' option in the popup and enter the details

Why is my Charities Trust statement not uploading?

Most likely, you are not uploading the statement detailed above. Whilst you can try uploading a different formatted statement, for it to work, you will need to update the column names, and the file must contain ALL of the following headers (spelt exactly as stated below):

First Name (each transaction must contain a first name)
Last Name (each transaction must contain a surname)
Total Donation to Charity (each transaction must contain a non-zero amount)
Admin Charge (each transaction must contain a transaction fee)

(additional columns can be present, but won't be imported).

NOTE: the Charities Trust transaction file doesn't include transaction dates. ExpensePlus will ask you to specify a 'date' as part of the upload process to overcome this (you just need to ensure the month you select matches the month the donation relates to).