Imagine a small charity with three events in a year. The spring plant sale took cash in a biscuit tin. The summer sponsored walk brought in sponsorship forms, some with full declarations and some half-filled. The autumn quiz paid by bank transfer, with a few cheques from people who did not want to use the online form. In March the claim is built from a spreadsheet, and nobody can say which declaration belongs to which event.
That is the usual position for a volunteer treasurer who inherited the books. The money is in the bank, the relief may be there to claim, but the paper trail is thin.
Why traceability matters
HMRC expects Gift Aid records to be kept for at least six years. That is longer than most committees remember. A question that comes back in year four may land on a treasurer who has already handed over, or on a chair who never saw the forms.
The question is usually simple. Which event did this gift come from? Does this declaration cover this donor for this period? Was the donor's name and address recorded at the time? If the answer is in a shoebox, the claim is harder to defend. If the answer is in the cash book, tagged to the event when the money was recorded, the job is much smaller.
Tag each gift when you record it
The habit that makes the difference is simple. When a gift is entered, tag it to the event or fund it came from. Do not leave it as a general donation to be sorted out later.
In Vasker, each gift is recorded against a fund in the cash book, so a plant sale, a sponsored walk and a quiz each keep their own line. Declarations are linked to the donor and the gift, so when the claim is built, the software can show which gifts have a declaration and which do not.
This matters most for cash. Gift Aid on a standard donation needs a declaration from the donor. The Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) is different. It is a top-up on qualifying small cash donations without individual declarations, subject to HMRC rules and caps. It does not replace declarations for named regular gifts, and collecting-tin cash does not always qualify. Record the event and the type of gift at the point of counting, so you know which rules apply.
What the claim build check catches
When a claim is built on Plus, Vasker runs a check before anything is sent. It looks for gifts that are missing a declaration, declarations without a valid donor name or address, and gifts that cannot be matched to a source. It shows these as a list, so you can fix them or leave them out.
That list is useful. It can save a rejected submission and a second round of chasing forms. It is not a guarantee. The check cannot tell whether a donor really meant what they wrote on a form, whether a declaration is still valid for the period, or whether a claim will be accepted. Those decisions still sit with the treasurer and the trustees.
Keep the request and response record
Each submission to HMRC produces a request and a response. Keep both. Vasker stores the request and response XML from each claim on Plus, so if a question comes back, you have the exact data that was sent and what HMRC replied.
This is the record that answers a question from year four. It does not need to be re-created from memory. Store it with the claim summary, the declarations and the event list, and make sure the next treasurer knows where it is kept.
A worked line of arithmetic
Here is the sum, shown as an illustration only. If an organisation has £2,000 of eligible donations from UK taxpayers, each with a valid declaration, the Gift Aid at 25p in the pound is £500.
That is arithmetic, not a forecast. It is not a typical result for any organisation. Many small charities have a mix of eligible and ineligible income, and the figure depends entirely on the declarations you hold. Use the sum to understand the rule, not to plan a budget.
If you want a rough planning figure for your own organisation, the free Gift Aid gap calculator takes a few minutes and needs no account. It produces an estimate, not a claim. You can run it at Estimate your Gift Aid gap.
Who sends the claim
The treasurer or chair sends each claim to HMRC, using the organisation's own Government Gateway login. Vasker does not store Government Gateway passwords. The sender ID and password are typed only when the claim is submitted and then discarded.
This keeps the link to HMRC with the people who are accountable for the organisation. If you are the treasurer, make sure the chair or a second trustee knows how the login is held, so the claim can still be sent if you are unavailable.
General information, not tax advice
This is general information for UK volunteer treasurers, not tax or legal advice. Gift Aid rules, GASDS rules, declaration wording and membership benefit rules change. Check current HMRC Charities Online and Gift Aid guidance before you send a claim, and check the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI guidance that applies to your organisation.
Vasker is listed by HMRC as commercial software for filing Gift Aid and charity repayment claims online through Charities Online. HMRC does not endorse or approve any software supplier. The HMRC list page is the place to check that listing as it stands.
Plus (£119 a year) covers the Gift Aid and GASDS claim tooling described above. The Free and Standard plans keep the cash book and member records, so you can start with the books and add claim tooling when your claim is ready.