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Information Classification: Public

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Gift Aid is an important part of UK charity income, and Beacon is an integral part of claiming and reporting on Gift Aid for your fundraising team.

For most charities, Gift Aid doesn’t need to pass through Beacon for effective financial reconciliation. Where it is required, Beacon can be configured to give detailed financial information for your Gift Aid as well.

Overall approach:

• Do not create separate Payment records for Gift Aid received from your donations. Gift Aid should be calculated, stored, and managed from the original donation’s Payment
• Create ’Gift Aid amount’ and ‘Amount (with Gift Aid)’ currency smart fields on your Payments for reporting
• There is both a simple and a complete approach you can take for managing Gift Aid and reconciliation. For most charities, we recommend trying the simple approach first!

Contents:

Simple approach

For most charities, we recommend you take a simple approach to storing and reconciling your Gift Aid in Beacon.

Using the ‘Gift Aid amount’ and ‘Amount (with Gift Aid)’ smart fields you will already have the full ability to report on your fundraising income and include Gift Aid in those totals where you need.

To reconcile your bank statement where payouts include Gift Aid, simply add account transaction/ledger items for the Gift Aid and any associated fees.

Payouts with only Gift Aid amounts

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Where a payout contains only Gift Aid amounts, and no donations

For example, payouts from HMRC or JustGiving

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• Don’t create the Payouts in Beacon
• Reconcile directly in your finance system
  • Use the reports from your external platform (or the Gift Aid claim record in Beacon if HMRC) to check amounts are correct
  • Create a single account transaction/ledger item for the total Gift Aid amount and then allocate it to your Gift Aid income account code
  • If there are fees, create a another account transaction/ledger item for the total fees and then allocate it to your relevant expenses account code.

Payouts with donations and Gift Aid

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Where a payout contains donations as well as Gift Aid amounts

For example, payouts from CAF or MuchLoved

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• A Payout record should be created as normal and relevant donations linked to it
  • Totals will not match your bank statements, as it will be missing the Gift Aid component
• Export the donations to your finance system, and allocate them as normal
• Account for the Gift Aid manually
  • Use the reports from your external platform to calculate the amount of Gift Aid in the payout
  • Create a single account transaction/ledger item for the total Gift Aid amount and then allocate it to your Gift Aid income account code
  • If there are Gift Aid fees (separate from the fees attributed to the donation), create a another account transaction/ledger item for the total fees and then allocate it to your relevant expenses account code
  • Totals should now match your bank statement
• (optional) For completeness, add the net Gift Aid amount to the ‘Adjustments’ field on the Payout record in Beacon with a note that it was the included Gift Aid.

Complete approach