CRA requirements for sending electronic official donation receipts

Lyne Labrecque · January 2019

One of my canadian colleague posted this on our Canadian Google forum but we have not had any responses. I'm wondering if anybody in the huge Blackbaud RE community would have any idea concerning this. Thank you.

"OLX and e_Receipting

Is anyone using Online Express to process donations and issue electronic tax receipts? If so, how are you are addressing the CRA requirements for sending electronic official donation receipts by e-mail? We aren't concerned about the "read only or non-editable format" as the receipts are sent as PDFs. And we have tight controls around who can issue receipts via OLX. What we aren't sure about is the electronic signature and encryption requirement:

"Charities can use a secure electronic signature, which means that the document is encrypted and signed with an electronic signature such as entrust technology. The receipt would then be generally safe from outside hackers or the recipient would know if someone had altered the contents of the receipt that was sent. The use of the secure electronic signature should be kept under the control of a responsible individual authorized by the registered charity."

If issuing e-receipts using OLX, is anyone taking additional steps to ensure that the documents are encrypted? And if so, what are you doing?"

Lyne

Pattie Roozendaal · February 2019

Hi Lyne,

I'm curious about this as we are using e-Tapestry to issue our Canadian tax receipts. What is OLX? It was my understanding that the receipts we're issuing are encrypted pdf's with e-Tapestry. How would I know if it's not?

Thanks,

Pattie

Lyne Labrecque · February 2019

I just got a response from BB support. OLX (Online Express) e-receipts are NOT CRA-compliant as per article https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/188087. They are "working on it" and in the meantime suggest that we use email merges from RE. I pay for OLX and I'm really not happy that they are not compliant as of yet. It does not say when the article was posted. I have open an idea on RE community. Please vote for it and ask all your Canadian colleagues to do so.

https://re7.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RE7-I-5329

Ben Murane 2 · February 2019

What? This is totally unacceptable, given how we were sold on OLX because it was CRA compliant. The whole point of this software is to save time. But we're back to doing this three same way as before paying extra?

Lyne Labrecque · February 2019

I would not mind if someone where to contact them and get a confirmation on this! Never know...

Lucy Ruiz 3 · January 2022

I have successfully created e receipting using Word mail merge functionality and the Adobe Word Plug in. High level overview;

Create a generic outlook account e.g. taxreceipts@abcfoundation.org

Export the file from Mail/Receipts creating a .csv file.

Ensure you have a PDF plug in for word (this usually requires a full version of Adobe)

Use standard mail merge functionality and you are off to the races. (make sure the new outlook account is open on the machine you are running receipts on). You do not have to password protect.

The nice thing about using this process, is an email bounces back you can easily print the receipt and mail to the donor.

Lucy Ruiz 3 · January 2022

see a full discussion on this topic:

https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/147/57578 (CRA Compliant Tax Receipts (Canada Only)

CRA requirements for sending electronic official donation receipts

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