We have set up a process to use SAGE for education to record parental donations and compile gift aid reports in a format which can be pasted into the HMRC OSD spreadsheet. I record donations in an access database, but it could just as easily be a spreadsheet. I then use a spreadsheet to take the data and generate 3 SAGE import files, donors (ie customers), invoices and receipts. These are checked against the bank statement before importing. The key is using the customer analysis code 2 (I already use code 1 for counter-party data) to identify if a donation is gift aided or not. The ensuing bank reconciliation is then very easy, and having imported each donation there is a 100% tie-up between the accounts and the donation record. SAGE have designed me a report which when exported to Excel is in the right format to quickly copy and paste into the HMRC template. I think this would be worth formalising for Sage for Education as a process and making the report available as a standard for all schools with a help sheet explaining how to set up the import templates.
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