Canada - Electronic Tax Receipting

Amanda Kostyk

Morning, Does anyone at a Canadian organization use RE to send electronic tax receipting? If you do not use RE but still send receipts electronically how do you go about this? We are researching our options on electronic tax receipting, we have been asked by a couple donors on this and are trying to see if it's a viable option for our organization. Any comments, suggestions to help would be greatly appreciated!

Aldera Chisholm

Amanda Dykeman:
Morning, Does anyone at a Canadian organization use RE to send electronic tax receipting? If you do not use RE but still send receipts electronically how do you go about this? We are researching our options on electronic tax receipting, we have been asked by a couple donors on this and are trying to see if it's a viable option for our organization. Any comments, suggestions to help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Amanda, We are in the process of setting it up right now - I have done a few test runs, but we haven't fully instituted it in, but have been easing in slowly. It's reasonably simple - and I'd be happy to chat with you about our processes. Once we got the actual tech side set up, which took quite a bit of trial and error, it's an easy process. We basically have two receipt stacks - one for e-receipts, one for printed. When I enter my gifts in batch, I select the stack based on whether we have their email address or not. Our receipt is a custom one in mail merge. You have to run the merge and ensure you flag not to update receipts, do your proofing, and then run it again to send the receipts. My only complaint is you don't get cc'ed a copy of the mail, so you just hope it works. You do get an error message if it doesn't work though. That's the quick version - happy to answer any questions! Aldera

Valerie Weddell

Aldera Chisholm:

Amanda Dykeman:

Morning, Does anyone at a Canadian organization use RE to send electronic tax receipting? If you do not use RE but still send receipts electronically how do you go about this? We are researching our options on electronic tax receipting, we have been asked by a couple donors on this and are trying to see if it's a viable option for our organization. Any comments, suggestions to help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Amanda, We are in the process of setting it up right now - I have done a few test runs, but we haven't fully instituted it in, but have been easing in slowly. It's reasonably simple - and I'd be happy to chat with you about our processes. Once we got the actual tech side set up, which took quite a bit of trial and error, it's an easy process. We basically have two receipt stacks - one for e-receipts, one for printed. When I enter my gifts in batch, I select the stack based on whether we have their email address or not. Our receipt is a custom one in mail merge. You have to run the merge and ensure you flag not to update receipts, do your proofing, and then run it again to send the receipts. My only complaint is you don't get cc'ed a copy of the mail, so you just hope it works. You do get an error message if it doesn't work though. That's the quick version - happy to answer any questions! Aldera

 

Hi Aldera,



You mention that you don't get cc'ed on the email - does the receipt file get attached to the gift record so that if you need a reprint you can pull it directly from the constituent's record? 



Thank you!

Valerie

Lisa Waite

Hello:

I am not sure if you already have your answer or not but if you go on the BB Knowledgebase ID BB244868 this is how you would preview receipts before they are emailed.

Hope this helps!

Lisa

Aldera Chisholm

Whoops, yes, I didn't see that question. As Lisa notes, the key is in the preview. We save an archive copy of all previews so we can simply reprint from that if needed for internal use. If the donor wanted a re-print, our protocol would be to void the old receipt and re-issue a new digital receipt.



Cheers

Valerie Weddell

Thanks. I've been wondering about that specifically. As CRA regulations state that a replacement receipt must indicate that this is a replacement receipt and the number of the initial receipt, I'm wondering how you handle this. Do you have a different custom receipt in Mail for this situation?



And for best practices purposes, if someone has just misplaced a receipt, why do you cancel instead of just reprinting the original?



Thanks again!!

Aldera Chisholm

We cancel instead of reprint simply because that function freezes up on us when we try to use it with e-receipts within Mail in RE, so it's just easier to cancel and re-issue. So, it's less of a protocol decision and one of practicality. 



For the CRA wording, we use a notes line on all our receipts and for re-issued receipts it will read "voids and replaces receipt #



 

Valerie Weddell

I just realized that you noted this for eReceipts - for receipts that you are mailing do you use the reprint function?



Thank you Aldera!

Aldera Chisholm

Hi,

Yes this is EReceipt exclusive. For printed Tax receipts, we very rarely have needed to re-issue, but when we do, we use the Reprint Function in Mail. However, there is a known issue with RE and Canadian databases where it will mess up the receipt numbers using this function depending on whether you make the Receipt number field available or the Printed Receipt number field available (spend HOURS with a rep on this in January) so we use it as little as possible.