Someone on the committee has said the club could be claiming Gift Aid. Now the job has landed on you, and you are not sure what has been recorded, where the declarations are, or whether the club qualifies at all. That is a reasonable place to stop and look before you build anything.
This piece is a readiness check for a community amateur sports club (CASC) that has not yet sent a claim. It does not repeat our existing guides on keeping CASC cash books separate, CASC accounting requirements, members' donations, or the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS). Read those alongside this one if you need the detail.
Check eligibility before anything else
Only organisations that HMRC accepts as eligible can claim Gift Aid. For a CASC, that starts with your registration. Find the registration documents, check the registration is current, and confirm the name and details on HMRC's records match what you hold.
Do not assume that because one club claims, yours can. Eligibility depends on your own status. Check current HMRC guidance on Gift Aid for community amateur sports clubs, and your registration with the relevant HMRC team, before you spend an evening on spreadsheets.
Sort the money into piles
Next, look at the year's income and split it into four groups:
- Donations. Gifts made with no benefit in return. These are the usual starting point for Gift Aid.
- Membership fees. Be careful here. Membership subscriptions do not always qualify. Whether a fee can be treated as a donation depends on what members receive in return and on the rules HMRC sets out for membership benefits. Check that guidance rather than assuming.
- Payments for something received. Entry fees, match fees, coaching sessions, and bar or kit sales are payments for goods or services. They are not donations.
- Cash from events. Raffles, collections and fundraising nights. Some of this may fall under GASDS rather than individual Gift Aid, and some may not qualify at all.
The point of this step is not to make the list look impressive. It is to stop you claiming relief on money that does not qualify. A committee will ask about this at the AGM, and an HMRC enquiry will ask about it later.
Work out what records you already hold
For each donation you want to claim on, you need four things:
- A declaration from the donor, confirming they are a UK taxpayer and agreeing that the club can claim Gift Aid on the gift. Check the wording against current HMRC guidance, because a declaration that is missing a required element is not valid.
- A bank line showing the money arrived. Keep the statement or the bank export.
- A date for each gift, so you can match it to the tax year.
- A name linked to the amount, so you know who gave what.
Most clubs have some of this and not all of it. Declarations may be in a box, a folder or an old email. Some may be on paper forms signed years ago. Bank lines may exist, but the names may be missing from the reference field. Make a simple list of gaps: donors with no declaration, gifts with no name, and cash that has no record at all.
If a donor has no valid declaration, you can ask them to complete one for future gifts. Do not claim on gifts that you cannot evidence. Keep the paperwork for at least six years, because HMRC expects Gift Aid records to be kept for that long.
Where GASDS might fit
GASDS is a top-up on qualifying small cash donations where there is no individual declaration. It is useful for collecting tins and small cash gifts at events. It is not a replacement for declarations on named regular gifts.
GASDS has rules and caps set by HMRC. It does not apply to every cash collection, and a donation does not qualify just because it was put in a tin. Check the current HMRC guidance and the scheme's limits before you include any cash in a claim. Our separate guide on GASDS covers the practical side.
What the arithmetic looks like
Here is a worked example, and nothing more. Suppose a club has £2,000 of eligible donations from UK taxpayers, and each gift has a valid declaration. At 25p in the pound, the Gift Aid on those gifts is £500.
That is arithmetic, not a forecast. Most clubs will have a mix of qualifying and non-qualifying income, and the figure you can claim depends on your records. The free gap calculator can give you a rough planning estimate before you decide anything: Estimate your Gift Aid gap. It needs no account, and it is a planning tool, not a claim.
What Vasker Plus does with a claim
Vasker's Plus plan is the part that handles claims. It records declarations, including enduring, single and verbal declarations. It holds individual, sponsored-event and GASDS small donations. It builds the claim, checks it for validation problems before you send it, and keeps the request and response XML as evidence if HMRC asks about it later.
The claim is sent by you or the chair, using the club's own Government Gateway login. Vasker does not store Government Gateway passwords. The sender ID and password are typed when the claim is submitted and then discarded.
Vasker does not check a claim for accuracy on HMRC's behalf, and it does not guarantee that a claim will succeed. The records still have to be right.
Choosing a plan
Vasker has three plans:
- Free (£0) is a starter cash book with one fund. It suits a club that wants to try the books before committing.
- Standard (£59 a year) covers full books, members, subscriptions, reports and grant matching.
- Plus (£119 a year) adds the Gift Aid and GASDS claim tooling, plus examiner access tooling.
If your problem is only the cash book, Standard may be enough. If you are about to send your first claim, Plus is the plan that includes the claim tooling. Check the current plan details before you choose, because prices and inclusions can change. There is no sales call and no setup fee, and you can create the organisation yourself from Sign up in a few minutes.
General information and where to check
This is general information for UK volunteer treasurers. It is not tax, legal or accounting advice. Before you send a claim, check current HMRC Charities Online guidance, the GASDS rules, the Gift Aid declaration requirements and the membership-benefit rules. Check the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI guidance that applies to your organisation as well.
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. You can check the list on HMRC's own pages, and you should re-check it, because the listing depends on its current status.
If you are not yet sure whether your club qualifies or what your records show, start with the checks above, then use the gap calculator for a planning figure.