The problem most treasurers recognise
Every treasurer of a small charity knows the folder. Gift Aid declarations arrive as scanned forms, photos of paper slips, a reply to an email from someone who gave £20 at the summer fete, and a note written on the back of a raffle ticket. They sit in an email folder or a box file. Once a year someone opens a spreadsheet, copies names and dates across by hand, and tries to build a claim before a deadline the committee has half forgotten.
That works until it does not. A donor moves house, a column disappears when the spreadsheet is passed on, or an HMRC query arrives about a claim from three years ago and nobody can find the declaration behind it.
A claim tool does not remove the need to understand Gift Aid. What it can do is hold the records behind a claim in one place, check them before anything is sent, and keep the evidence afterwards. This article covers what a claim tool should record, the awkward cases that need separate handling, and what to keep once the claim has gone. It is general information for volunteer treasurers, not tax advice.
What a claim tool needs to hold
A declaration is the donor's statement that they are a UK taxpayer and that the charity may claim Gift Aid on their gifts. For the claim to stand up, the record behind it needs to show the declaration type, who made it, when, and which gifts it covers.
There are three types you are likely to meet:
- Enduring declarations cover all future qualifying donations until the donor cancels or the declaration is withdrawn. They are the ones that matter most for a regular giver, such as a member who pays monthly.
- Single declarations cover one specific donation.
- Verbal declarations are given in person or on the phone. The charity still has to record them properly, with the donor's details and the date, and keep that record.
For each declaration, a claim tool should hold the donor's full name, home address including postcode, the date the declaration was made, the type of declaration, and a link to each donation it covers. A record that only says Jane, £20, June is not enough when someone asks questions later.
Where a donor has withdrawn a declaration, or their status has changed, the record should show that too. A tool that only ever adds rows will make the claim look more complete than it is.
Check the current HMRC declaration wording and conditions before you rely on any template, because the detail matters.
Sponsored events, aggregated donations and GASDS small donations
These three cases look like ordinary donations on the bank statement, but they are handled differently, and a claim tool needs to treat them separately.
Sponsored events. A sponsored run, walk or swim usually produces a list of sponsors who each pledged an amount, often with a declaration on the sponsor form. The record needs to link each sponsorship payment to the sponsor and to the event, so that the claim does not treat the whole event as one anonymous gift. Sponsor forms are often the weakest part of the evidence, so a copy of the form should be kept with the event record.
Aggregated donations. Sometimes a number of smaller gifts come from one source, such as a collection at an event, and are combined into a single entry. Aggregated donations are allowed under the rules only in certain circumstances, and the charity must be able to show how the total was made up. A claim tool should keep the underlying list, not just the total.
GASDS small donations. The Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) is a top-up on qualifying small cash donations where no individual declaration was collected. It is a separate scheme from standard Gift Aid, and it is subject to HMRC rules and caps. Collecting-tin cash does not always qualify, so you should not assume that every tin is eligible. GASDS also does not replace declarations for named regular gifts. If a donor has given regularly and you have their details, you still need their declaration for those gifts.
A claim tool should let you tag each income line by type, so that these cases are not mixed together in one total. That tagging is what makes the difference when the claim is checked.
Validation before you send, and why the XML matters
Before a claim goes to HMRC, it should be checked. A good claim tool will flag missing postcodes, declarations without dates, donations with no matching declaration, and totals that do not agree with the underlying list. Validation catches a lot of routine errors. It does not guarantee that HMRC will accept the claim or that every figure is right, so the treasurer still needs to read the summary and understand it.
On Vasker's Plus plan, claims are built with validation and an IRmark, which is a check code HMRC uses on submitted claims. The request and response XML from each submission are retained as dispute evidence. If HMRC later asks what was sent and what came back, you have the exact messages rather than a memory of them.
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.
On Plus, the claim is sent from Vasker, but the treasurer or chair sends it using the organisation's own Government Gateway login. Vasker does not store Government Gateway passwords. The sender ID and password are typed only at the point of submission and then discarded. That is a sensible arrangement to ask about before you choose any tool, and it is worth checking that you understand who is sending the claim in your organisation.
HMRC expects records to be kept for at least six years
HMRC expects Gift Aid records to be kept for at least six years. That covers the declarations, the donation records that link to them, the claim summaries, and the submission evidence. Keeping the XML is only part of it. The declarations themselves, including the paper or email originals where you have them, should be kept in a form you can find again.
Six years is longer than most volunteers stay in the role. That is why the records should be kept in a way that survives handover. A treasurer handover pack should include the declaration records, the claim history, and a note saying where everything is. If the only copy of a declaration sits in the outgoing treasurer's personal inbox, it will not be there when the next person needs it.
Check your own charity's record-keeping duties with the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI guidance that applies to you, as well as HMRC's current guidance.
General information, not tax advice
This article is general information about what a claim tool should record and keep. It is not tax advice or legal advice. Gift Aid and GASDS rules, declaration wording and caps can change, and the detail for your organisation may differ from the examples here. Check current HMRC Charities Online and Gift Aid guidance before you make a claim.
If you want a rough idea of what unclaimed Gift Aid might be worth for your charity, the Gift Aid gap calculator is free and needs no account. It produces a planning estimate, not a claim. If you then want to build and send claims with the records described above, the Plus plan is £119 a year, and it includes Gift Aid and GASDS claim tools, validation, and retention of the request and response XML.