If you're a UK-based charity, Beacon does the heavy lifting to make it easy for you to claim Gift Aid on your donations from UK taxpayers.
Watch our short video to learn more about how Beacon makes it easy to manage your Gift Aid.
How Beacon helps you with Gift Aid
When a payment (e.g. a donation) is added to your Beacon database, we automatically check to see if the payment is eligible for Gift Aid.
If a payment is eligible, the payment is automatically added to a new Gift Aid Claim in your Beacon database. This claim is marked as 'Open' - which means that your claim is currently being built up.
As the month progresses, Beacon will automatically include any payments that are eligible to the ongoing Gift Aid claim, whether these are donations that come through a Beacon form - or even payment records that were imported 👍
From the Gift Aid claim record, you'll see the list of all payments that have been included and also a message confirming the claim is still active - ready for submission on the first of the following month:
Once the month is over, the open claim is marked as 'Ready to submit' - where before submitting your claim, you can also preview the payments that will be submitted to HMRC by downloading a CSV file with the data that will be sent, including:
First & last name
Address
Payment amount & date
Other info (for overseas and sponsorship)
And then, when you're ready to submit your claim, you can submit it directly to HMRC through Beacon. You won't need to login to Charities Online to submit the claim - Beacon communicates with HMRC directly!
To make things even easier, once the claim is submitted, Beacon will attach a CSV file with a list of all payments that were claimed upon, and the raw data (in XML) sent and received with HMRC (Important for audit purposes). This will all be linked on the Gift Aid claim record, so you can reference this down the line if needs be. Easy peasy!
Long be gone the days of spreadsheet calculations, Beacon will continuously compile your claims as time goes on - where the submission process is as simple as clicking a button 👍
Enabling Gift Aid with Beacon
Set up process
Now that you’re ready to get Gift Aid enabled with Beacon, let’s run through getting this set up in more detail.
Firstly, you’ll want to make sure you have the Fundraising element enabled as part of your account. This would be a required element, where you’d want to make sure this is part of your active elements on your Settings > Elements page before proceeding with the next step.
From there, simply navigate to your sidebar, look for your Settings, and enter the Gift Aid page:
You’ll see a number of settings to do with Gift Aid - where you would initially want to the toggle to enable the feature:
From here, you can customise your Gift Aid experience further by adding what type of payments you accept as part of your Gift Aid processes.
Note: There are restrictions around what payments are accepted as part of Gift Aid reclaim - More on Gift Aid eligibility can be found here.
Finally, you’ll need to submit the details of your Authorised Official and your Charity ID, save the page, and you’re up and running! More on where to find these credentials in the next section.
Locating your Gift Aid details
Where do we find our Authorised Official details?
Where do we find our Authorised Official details?
These credentials would be the same as you use to log into the HMRC Governmental Gateway where you would be looking for a 12 digit Governmental Gateway User ID, and your password.
Where do we find our Charity ID?
Where do we find our Charity ID?
Your Charity ID is different to your registration number with The Charities Commission. This is HMRC's reference ID, and you'll find it in your Government Gateway account.
Log in to Government Gateway.
Once logged in, click the Claim tax back on donations link:
In the top-right of the page, you'll see your charity name, and the charity ID:
Why Beacon needs your HRMC login details
HMRC requires these details from all third-party providers (like Beacon) who submit Gift Aid claims on your behalf. These details are used to securely communicate with HMRC when a Gift Aid claim is submitted.
Note: We take security really seriously here at Beacon HQ! That's why we add an extra level of encryption when saving your Gift Aid settings. We will never use these details to login to your HMRC account directly.
Third-party collection agents like Virgin Money Giving or JustGiving do not require these details, as HMRC has a different integration approach for them. This is not the case for Beacon (and most other charity CRM providers) as Beacon is not a collection agent - where the Gift Aid claim is not submitted on your behalf.
Gift Aid collection agents claim Gift Aid for you, collecting the funds and paying you at a later date (often deducting a fee).
Beacon simply provides the tools to make it easy for you to submit a claim yourself - Except that with Beacon, you don't have to deal with spreadsheets!
My HRMC details aren't working
When setting up your Gift Aid settings for the first time, you may occasionally get the following error: "The HMRC access credentials you provided are not correct".
Usually, this means that the Gift Aid credentials entered do not match those that HMRC has on file. Here's a couple of things to try if you hit this:
Double-check the User ID and Password. We suggest you try logging in to HMRC with these details
Double-check the Authorised official details. Try comparing these to your HMRC online account.
Don't copy and paste; Instead, type out the credentials manually. Sometimes hidden or unrecognised characters are included when we copy and paste, so typing the details manually can ensure this isn't an issue.
Submitting Gift Aid claims
Submitting Gift Aid claims couldn’t be any easier. When the Gift Aid claim has generated (following the end of the previous month), you can submit the claim by following the below steps:
Locate the Gift Aid claim record type on your Sidebar, and click into the record type.
Find the claim you want to submit, and click into the individual record.
Click on the "Submit" button on the right hand side and wait for that to go through!
That’s it! Done and dusted 👍 Sit back, relax and wait for HMRC to return the funds back to your bank account.
Note: In the case you’re potentially re-submitting the claim, you’ll see the button display this option accordingly:
My claim doesn't look right
If you’ve claimed too much on a previously submitted claim, then you can make an adjustment to your next claim in Beacon to reflect this.
Let’s say you had duplicate payments and accidentally claimed Gift Aid on a £100 donation twice. You would have claimed a total of £50 in Gift Aid from HMRC, composed of £25 from the correct payment and £25 from the duplicate payment. Before you click submit on your next Gift Aid Claim in Beacon, you will see the opportunity to make adjustments as below:
In our Adjustments card, we can enter the amount of our error (in our case, £25) and add any adjustment notes to provide context to HMRC.
Note: Adjustment amounts should always be positive; it is the amount that you've over-claimed.
If you've claimed too little, this is probably because payments that you thought were Gift Aid eligible didn’t meet Beacon’s eligibility requirements.
In this scenario, you'll need to find the payments that you think should have been claimed but haven't and update their information so that it meets the requirements. The card on the right hand side of the Payment record will point out what needs to be amended, where once the payments are eligible Beacon will automatically add them to your next claim.
Check out what makes a payment eligible for Gift Aid to see a list of requirements.
Collecting Gift Aid declarations
Collecting Gift Aid declarations with Beacon is as easy as checking a box, quite literally!
When a donor completes a Donation form, they'll be presented with the option to submit a Gift Aid declaration provided they are eligible:
From there, you'll see their declaration come through to your Gift Aid declaration record type:
This will be where all of your declarations are stored, and will have handy links to the People records that were either created through the form submission - or People records that were previously within your database.
How Gift Aid declarations through Beacon are compliant
HMRC has an explicit note that mentions databases, but we'll look at why that doesn't apply to Beacon:
"The transcribing of declarations given by donors into a database will not
satisfy the requirements to have an auditable record as such a record does
not demonstrate that the donor made the declaration."
Firstly, Gift Aid declaration records from form submissions are not transcriptions; they are created directly from a donor's actions on your form.
Secondly, Gift Aid declaration records show that it was indeed the donor that created it, so does demonstrate that the donor made the declaration:
To fully complete the audit trail, there will be a 'form submission' entry on the donors timeline too, so you can even tie it back to the specific form they completed.
Tip: You can include the {{{gift_aid_declaration_ticked}}} merge tag in your form acknowledgements or notifications to see whether the donor gave a Gift Aid declaration on that form.
The merge tag will display either Yes or No depending on whether they chose to give a declaration or not.
Collecting oral declarations
No worries on this one! You'll find more about collecting oral declarations here.
More information
Gift Aid and sponsored events
Can donations for sponsored events be claimed with Beacon? Yes!
Learn more about claiming Gift Aid for sponsorships here.
Small donations scheme
Beacon allows you to claim Gift Aid top-up payments on small donations through the Small Donations Scheme (GASDS). Learn more about this here.
Aggregated donations scheme
Does Beacon work with the aggregated donations scheme?
No. Beacon does not support the aggregated donations scheme.
We'd suggest that you store the details of individual donations, people, and Gift Aid declarations in Beacon. This will allow you to make full use of the CRM's features, its security, and Beacon's Gift Aid functionality. Even better, take these details through a Beacon form to cut down on manual data entry!
If you'd like to use HMRC's aggregated donations scheme, you will need to submit these Gift Aid claims outside of Beacon.
Calculating the Gift Aid value of donations received
Beacon doesn't store Gift Aid amounts out of the box but there may be some reporting you wish to do where this is relevant. Luckily we've put together some handy Gift Aid smart field examples here to help you with this.
What does the "Gift Aid allowed?" checkbox do?
All payments have a checkbox for 'Gift Aid allowed?'. This isn't a box for saying a payment will be claimed, it marks whether this payment is eligible in principle.
This should be ticked for the vast majority of payments, unless you want to explicitly exclude it from being claimed (e.g. the donor received a substantial benefit for this donation).
For example, if you receive a donation, it should usually be ticked. You don't need to know if the payment is eligible, just that all other things considered it should be checked for eligibility.
Unchecked - This payment will not be claimed, even it it meets all other criteria for being claimed.
Checked - This payment might be claimed, but only if it meets all other criteria for being claimed.