End of Year Receipting in 4 Easy Steps

It is the most wonderful, but busy time of the year.

End-of-year can be a stressful time for any organization. This is triply true for Not-for-Profits, who have 17-30% of their annual revenue arriving in December. This is followed by a season of tax receipting that must meet national standards, follow donor preferences, and save copies into a database in case of errors.

So what are some steps that can make this stressful time easier for your team?

1. Review How receipting works for your Database/CRM

We have all experienced the stomach-churning moment when you realize a button/feature you have always relied on has been discontinued. Clippy, I will always miss you and your helpful suggestions! The best time to find out about these changes is before you are about to run your receipting process.

Run through last year's receipting process a month before the receipts need to be generated.

If something looks different or needs updating, don’t fret. There are a lot of free resources out there for you. Most CRMs for non-profits provide free tutorials on how to process receipts on their knowledgebase or youtube channel.

Donor Perfect has a great resource here. Canada Revenue Agency has a list of requirements here. Additionally, we have a free resource on producing e-receipts using Raiser’s Edge here.

Go through any resources you find and add the parts that can improve your process. Then try, try again. Finding something that will work can take some iteration.

2. Clean Data, Less Receipt Editing

There is nothing more frustrating than finally finishing receipting and realizing that the receipts you generated are filled with small errors to be corrected. Receipting is definitely a place where it is best to measure twice and cut once.

After reviewing your process and making, any changes that are needed, query or pull all of the donations you are expecting to receipt. This query should include all of the fields you will be using when receipting.

• Donor Names / Salutations

• Donor Address

• Solicitation Preferences

• Gift Campaigns / Funds / Appeals

• Etc.

From here bring this data into your spreadsheet of choice and look through for any values that are incorrect.

For those of us at larger organizations, this can be an intimidating prospect. But there are some ways to simplify this work.

Using the sort functionality, present in most spreadsheets, you can quickly scroll through all of the values present in a field. This will help you spot old/incorrect values and help you find the gifts that may need updating.

Additionally, if address formatting is the issue, you can use Address Verification software. Some of which will integrate with your chosen CRM. If that isn’t the best option for you, there are simple checks like ensuring that all Canadian postal codes are 7 digits long.

Once your query is neat and tidy, you can rest assured that you have avoided hunting through hundreds of pdf or word documents correcting these errors one at a time.

3. Beautify Receipt Templates

We could all use a new set of clothes every now and again. Especially, if we are aiming to impress. While receipts may not be the most impressive of things. They do still represent the professionalism of your charity, and keeping them sharp, reflects well on you.

Take some time to go back over your receipt templates from previous years. This is a great opportunity to not only make sure that your text and logos are up to date but to build on this contact point with your donor.

Donors, who feel personally thanked and who are informed about your impacts, are far more likely to give again.

An easy way to thank and inform is by adding a paragraph about what your organization has accomplished to the letter before your receipt. Highlighting your victories throughout the post-pandemic economic downturn can be particularly effective.

This paragraph does two things.

• It highlights the unique needs that your organization is stretching to meet

• It thanks donors for being a part of that work

You can even provide a link to your annual report for those who are most interested.

Furthermore, there are tools for the fundraiser looking for advanced ways to build on this touch point. Custom logic fields can allow you to provide tailored messaging to target donors while still using mail merges.

Perhaps you want to provide a special thank you to donors who participated in an event, or provide project updates to donors who donated towards a specific fund? There are ways to automate this process within your mail merge. That way you do not have to pull out each of those receipts and manually edit them.

By adding some code to your template you can provide custom messaging with the click of a button, all at once.

4. Press that Send Button and Celebrate

Now that you have done all of the extra prep work beforehand your process should be that much smoother. With a defined technical process, clean data, and a sleek template your receipts should generate themselves!

Sit back, review them with your beverage of choice, and enjoy the end of the most wonderful/busy time of the year.

If you ever need a extra hand or some added expertise on receipting, reach out to us! We would love to sit down for a free consultation!