On match day the bucket goes round the touchline at half time. A couple of bank transfers arrive on the Monday with a reference that just says 'donation'. Someone hands you a cheque in an envelope with no address on it. The hall gets the cash, the tea urn gets paid for, and nobody has ever asked who gave what.
If that sounds like your club, you are not alone. Most village sports clubs, PTAs and Scout groups collect money this way for years before anyone thinks about Gift Aid. By the time the examiner asks for the paperwork, the relief you could have claimed on those gifts is long gone or very hard to rebuild.
This guide is about the sorting job, not the software. Get the cash book right first and the claim becomes a lot less painful.
Sort the money into three piles
Open your cash book for the last year and look at every line that says donation, collection, gift or pledge. You will find that not every pound handed over is a donation. Some of it is payment for something.
Use three piles.
Pile one: small cash gifts with no declaration. This is the bucket on match day, the coins in the hall tin and the notes folded into the raffle box. Nobody gave a name or ticked a box, so there is no declaration behind them.
Pile two: named gifts where a declaration exists. These are the people who filled in a Gift Aid form, or who gave a regular amount and told you they were a UK taxpayer. Each gift should link back to a signed or recorded declaration. If it does not, it belongs in pile one until you find the paperwork.
Pile three: payments that are really for something. A raffle ticket, a bar tab, an entry fee for the fun run, a ticket to the Christmas do. These are receipts for goods or services. They are not donations, and they do not go into a Gift Aid claim.
Membership subscriptions sit awkwardly here. Paying a subscription does not automatically make it a qualifying donation, because the member usually gets something back, such as use of the pitch or a vote at the AGM. Check the current HMRC rules on membership benefits before you treat any subscription as eligible. Do not assume that because a member paid, the money qualifies.
Keep each pile visibly separate in the cash book. Your committee will ask why the totals differ from the bank statement. Clear piles give you a simple answer.
Which pile can feed a claim, and which may fit GASDS
Pile two is the straightforward one. Named gifts with a valid declaration can go into a standard Gift Aid claim. For each eligible pound, the claim adds 25 pence in basic-rate relief, at no extra cost to the donor. Check the live HMRC guidance for the current rate and the rules on declarations before you rely on that figure.
Pile one is where the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) may help. GASDS tops up qualifying small cash donations where there is no individual declaration. It is not a free-for-all. It has rules and caps, and it only applies to cash gifts that meet HMRC's conditions. Not every coin in a collecting tin qualifies, and a tin is not a reason to skip the paperwork for anything else.
GASDS does not replace declarations for named regular givers. If Mrs Patel gives £20 every month and has signed a declaration, that gift stays in a standard Gift Aid claim. Putting her into GASDS because it is easier would be the wrong call.
This is general information, not tax advice. Check current HMRC guidance on Gift Aid and GASDS before you submit anything, and check your organisation's own regulator guidance too: the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI, depending on where you are.
What the claim record needs to hold
When the examiner or HMRC asks a question, a claim is only as good as its records. For every gift in a claim, you need:
- the donor's name
- the donor's address
- the date of the gift
- the amount
- a link to the declaration for that donor, where one applies
- the request and response record from the submission
HMRC expects Gift Aid records to be kept for at least six years. That means the sign-up sheet from a summer fete five years ago still matters if it backs up a claim you made. A shoebox of receipts will not survive that long without a proper index.
For pile one, the record will look different. You will not have a name or declaration for each coin, so the evidence is the cash book entry, the date, the event, the amount counted and the banking record. Keep the count sheet signed by two people where you can. It is not glamorous, but it is what you will show if asked.
Building the claim in Vasker on Plus
Vasker is a bookkeeping app for unpaid UK treasurers. On the Plus plan, the Gift Aid and GASDS tools work from the same cash book you keep for the committee. You record each gift against its declaration, the claim is built from those records with validation checks, and the file is ready to send.
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 claim goes to HMRC from your organisation's own Charities Online account. The treasurer or chair sends it using the organisation's Government Gateway login. Vasker does not store Government Gateway passwords. You type the sender ID and password at submission, and they are discarded afterwards. The request and response records are kept with the claim, so you have the evidence if HMRC comes back with a question.
Validation catches the errors that usually cause trouble later: a missing address, a declaration that has not been linked, or a gift dated outside the claim period. It does not mean HMRC has checked the figures, and it does not guarantee the claim will be accepted. Read what it flags, check the donor list against your declarations and make the decision yourself.
Planning the year's figure
A small club that has never claimed Gift Aid and leaves a few thousand pounds of donations unclaimed may be walking away from £500 or more a year. That is a planning illustration, not a promise for your club. Your own figure depends on how much of your income is genuinely donated, how many donors have declarations, and what is in pile one.
The quickest way to get a rough sense of your own gap is the Gift Aid gap calculator. It is free, it does not need an account, and it gives a planning estimate rather than a claim. Take the number to the committee as the starting point for a conversation, not as a final figure. Estimate your Gift Aid gap
When you hand over the cash book at the end of your term, the three piles should still be there, with a note for your successor on which declarations are on file and where the count sheets are kept. That is the difference between a claim you can defend and a bucket nobody can account for.