What the searcher is trying to do
You have inherited the money side of the charity. Somewhere in the cash book there are donations from people who filled in a form, or said they were happy for the gift to count, and nobody has claimed the tax back on them. The church collection envelopes are in a box. The community group's sponsored walk raised a sum that looks sensible on the bank statement but has no Gift Aid attached. You want to know how to start claiming, what HMRC will expect to see, and whether it is worth the evening it will take.
Most volunteer treasurers arrive at this question for the same reason. The figures at the AGM look thin, the committee has asked whether the charity is missing anything, and the previous treasurer left a spreadsheet with a column headed "GA?" and no explanation. The short answer is that Gift Aid is a claim you make to HMRC on donations from UK taxpayers, and it is only as good as the declarations and records behind it.
The honest starting point is that over half of registered charities claim no Gift Aid at all. That is not a judgement on anyone. It usually means nobody has been given the job, the declarations were never collected, or the claim looked too fiddly to face. A charity that has not claimed before can still start. It just needs to take it in order.
The UK rules in plain English
This section is general information, not tax advice. Check current HMRC guidance on Gift Aid and on Charities Online before you act, and check the rules that apply to your own type of organisation with the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI, as relevant.
In outline, Gift Aid works like this. A UK taxpayer makes a donation to a registered charity and confirms that it is a Gift Aid donation. The charity can then claim an amount on top of the gift, which currently adds 25 pence for every eligible pound, at no extra cost to the donor. The donor needs to be a UK taxpayer who pays enough income tax or capital gains tax to cover the amount reclaimed. Check the live rate and the rules when you make your claim, because they can change.
The declaration is the part that matters most. For each donor you need a record that they have agreed to Gift Aid. That might be a paper form, an online tick box or, in some cases, a verbal confirmation that you have written down. HMRC accepts several forms of declaration, and they fall into three broad types: enduring declarations that cover regular giving until the donor cancels, single declarations for one gift, and verbal declarations that you record at the time. Each one needs the donor's name, their home address, the amount or period it covers, and the date.
Records have to be kept. HMRC expects Gift Aid records to be kept for at least six years, so the declaration forms, a note of each donation and the claim itself all need to survive the handover to the next treasurer. A shoebox of forms will not do if nobody can match them to the bank.
There is also a separate route called the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS), which tops up qualifying small cash donations where you do not have an individual declaration. It has rules and caps, and it does not replace declarations for named regular gifts. Collecting-tin cash does not always qualify, so read the current guidance before you rely on it.
Not every payment to a club or charity is a donation. Membership subscriptions do not automatically qualify for Gift Aid, and the benefits a member receives can affect the answer. Do not assume that a subscription line in the cash book can go into the claim.
How this product helps
Vasker is a bookkeeping app for unpaid treasurers of clubs, charities, PTAs, Scout groups, CASCs and churches. The cash book, members and Gift Aid records sit in one place, so the declaration you collected in March is linked to the donation in the bank and to the claim you build later. That is the step most charities find hardest: the paper and the bank rarely line up without someone doing the matching by hand.
On the free plan you get a starter cash book with one fund, which is enough to see what has come in and to start tidying the records. The Standard plan at £59 a year adds full books, members, subscriptions, reports and grant matching. The Plus plan at £119 a year adds Gift Aid and GASDS claim tooling, along with examiner access tooling for year-end.
On Plus, Vasker builds the claim from your declarations and validates it before you send it. Claims go to HMRC from Vasker, but the treasurer or chair sends each one 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. Every account uses two-factor authentication. Sending a claim through Vasker does not mean HMRC has reviewed or backs the app, and it does not guarantee that a claim will be accepted, so the records still have to be right.
The app is a web service with App Store and Google Play clients and a PWA install. The cash book needs a connection to work, so do not plan on offline bookkeeping.
Next step
If you are reading this with the box of forms next to you, start with the declarations. Sort them into donors who have a valid declaration and donors who do not. Then match the donations in the bank to each donor for the period you want to claim. That is the work that makes a claim possible, whatever tool you use.
When you are ready to try it on your own books, you can create your free account and enter the organisation in a few minutes. There is no sales call and no setup fee. Start on the free plan, check the cash book against last year's statements, and only move to Plus when you have the declarations in order and want Vasker to build the claim.
About the rules themselves, take your questions to current HMRC guidance and to the regulator for your type of organisation. Vasker is general treasurer guidance, not legal or tax advice.