Best practices for mutiple declarations from the same constituent

Tammy Yugin 2

Hi All


I am interested in how other organisations record gift aid declarations where there are numerous declarations from the same constituent within thin a recent time frame, EG one a year for the last 3 years. Do you record them all and have the Start date match the Made date, ending the prior declaration on the day before the new declaration to avoid overlapping dates and conflicts - so each declaration may only last a few months or a year between start and end dates?

Its simpler where there are large gaps between declarations as the new starts date can be 4 years prior to the made date, and the previous declaration ended at that point.


Thanks

Tammy


 

Alan French

Yes we record all declarations as you've described. Makes things simpler when importing new declarations from our telephone appeal software, as I can just add them all to RE without having to check who already has one, plus we then have an audit trail that they told us they were still eligible. We set the start date to be the same as the made date unless a donor specifically indicates that we can backdate it to include previous donations.


What I'm less clear on is what's best practice if someone makes a later gift and DOESN'T fill out the Gift Aid declaration this time around (but doesn't explicitly notify us that they no longer pay enough tax for their gift to be eligible). Have they assumed that they don't need to submit another declaration because we already have one from last time, or does their previous declaration need to be ended?

Tammy Yugin 2

Hi Alan


Thanks for that. Do you also end the previous declarations or leave them open - and if you end them can you do this in the import? I'm not sure its possible. We use BBGA (Scanstore) and having overlapping dates creates conflicts on the reports.


Thanks

Tammy    

Alan French:

Yes we record all declarations as you've described. Makes things simpler when importing new declarations from our telephone appeal software, as I can just add them all to RE without having to check who already has one, plus we then have an audit trail that they told us they were still eligible. We set the start date to be the same as the made date unless a donor specifically indicates that we can backdate it to include previous donations.


What I'm less clear on is what's best practice if someone makes a later gift and DOESN'T fill out the Gift Aid declaration this time around (but doesn't explicitly notify us that they no longer pay enough tax for their gift to be eligible). Have they assumed that they don't need to submit another declaration because we already have one from last time, or does their previous declaration need to be ended?

 

Alan French

We do end the existing declaration one day before the new one starts. I use ImportOmatic to import the new declarations, and it has a setting that will do this automatically! 

Phillip Bicknell

For paper appeals, we print the current GA status on the donation form, so the constituent gets a reminder of what our record shows every time.


Online, we have to take the vaguries of tick/no-tick on the chin, until such time as we do a mop-up ask - one can claim GA retrospectively.

Tammy Yugin 2

HI Alan
 
Your answers have been so helpful, thank you.
 
I’ve not seen or used Importomatic but my current organisation does use this. Does the facility allow you to end all previous declarations for a constituent when importing a new declaration, or does it choose the most recently made?
 
Thanks
Tammy  

 

Alan French:

We do end the existing declaration one day before the new one starts. I use ImportOmatic to import the new declarations, and it has a setting that will do this automatically! 

 

Alan French

Yes it'll end multiple declarations; the description next to the tick box on the settings screen is "when importing a tax declaration, set the end date on all open declarations to be one day earlier than the new declaration's start date".

Tammy Yugin 2

Thanks Alan. I'm doing some testing with that now and found that when I import via Omatic the declaration details, and then import a previous declaration to the same constituent, it ends the most recent declaration before it was made (when the previous declaration starts) and treats the earlier made declaration as the most recent (as it was imported after the more recent declaration). Can you think of a way around this?



Thanks

Tammy