Background
The Beacon Team and Beacon Project Board reviewed the implementation of Gift Aid for Beacon and some enhancements were agreed. It is planned to deploy these on 10th January 2023.
In Summary
- Whenever the consent status of a member changes it is recorded in a new dedicated log
- The Membership Secretary can change the Gift Aid status of members from the renewals screen
- More comprehensive wording on the member's portal when consenting to Gift Aid (join and renew)
- On the portal the member must tick one of consent or decline before proceeding
- If the Membership Secretary enters a "Gift Aid from" date there is a warning if the date is in the past
Gift Aid log
With more and more members using the portal the new Gift Aid log keeps a record of when and by whom (member or System User) consent was given or withdrawn.
The log will be visible from the home page Misc column menu to System Users with the privilege "Gift Aid declaration" (usually this will be the Treasurer and administrators).
Membership renewals
When members are renewed (usually by the Membership Secretary or Treasurer) it has always been frustrating that a change in Gift Aid has to be made to an individual's record in advance.
A column has been added to the Membership renewals screen to record or clear consent. Ticking a box will immediately set the member's Gift Aid date to today. Be aware that clearing the date (untick) and then ticking again will reset the consent date to today's date but this will not affect any historical payments with Gift Aid amounts recorded that have yet to be claimed.
Other changes
The wording on the member's portal is now more comprehensive and one of the boxes must be ticked before the member can proceed to payment.
If the Membership Secretary updates the Gift Aid date on a member's record it cannot be in the future. If the date is in the past a notice clarifies that historical transactions are not affected.
Comments
5 comments
A useful and more professional enhancement to the Gift Aid process.
I get a gift aid spreadsheet for the calendar year - and it does not show the two payments made by a new member in the year. I have to go through every line in detail so it is a frustrating and lengthy process each time. Presumably I can claim for a membership even if the member is since deceased? - but that does not appear on the spreadsheet either.
On deceased members then it's obviously reasonable Beacon doesn't claim because it is obviously possible the member didn't pay any tax.
I think you are saying new members joined but the Gift Aid status wasn't entered when the payment(s) ware recorded in Beacon so the Gift Aid amount was never present in the ledger?
It is also possible that the member (or his/her estate will) did pay tax in the tax year.
I am not saying that "the Gift Aid Status was not entered" , I am saying that when I get a report for the period where, as far as I can see the gift aid status has been entered, I have never seen two payments from a member. (And I am missing several other members who do not appear in the list although gift aid status is entered - and of course a few where the status was missed.)
To help further with this then it would be necessary to look at the ledger and audit log for the members concerned. Do you want help with this?
If a u3a really wants to contact the deceased estate to verify the tax position for just a few £s income then that will have to be a manual exercise to add a line in the claim form. I really don't think many of us would go there.
Please sign in to leave a comment.