Year-End Receipting Guide for Canadian Nonprofits
(Or, how to survive year-end receipting with your sanity intact.)
December is here, and if you're a database professional, you know the drill: exploding inbox, triple-shot lattes, and wishing Raiser's Edge could read your mind.
We Canadians have an extra hurdle. RENXT's web view can't generate consolidated receipts that meet CRA requirements yet. You're stuck in database view for this one, friends. Let's make it as painless as possible.
Getting Started
Think pre-flight checklist. Run a duplicate cleanup, verify spouse connections, and scrub your addresses. Review your receiptable gifts, flag event gifts to review, and confirm monthly donors have all gifts logged correctly. Another red flag is missing mailing addresses, because CRA requires one, even for emailed receipts.
Build Your Query
Raisers Edge can run the process just based on dates, but queries let you segment donors, spot issues, and process with confidence. Planning to mail and email? Make separate queries for each. Including constituents marked consolidated with non-receipted gifts dated this year. Keep it to gift types of Cash and Recurring Gift Pay-Cash. (Don’t forget, non-cash gifts like shares or art need separate receipts!)
Design Your Receipt Document
Now it’s down to a standard Microsoft/Google Mail Merge. A simple layout works best: cover letter in the top two-thirds, receipt at the bottom. For now, you’ll just have placeholders for where the fields like Gift Amount will go. You won’t be merging the gift date – just put the year. If you are going to be using window envelopes, make sure the donor address is placed correctly for that.
Set Up the Raisers Edge Receipt Merge
Go to Database View / Mail / Receipts and create a new template. After you connect your query, keep most of the default settings. You will need to select output fields. In addition to address lines and standard gift fields, choose Printed Receipt Number not just Receipt Number. (Vital if you use Receipt Stacks.) Critical Tip: CRA requires First, Middle Initial, and Last Name. The Mail template will output Addressee. When selecting Addressee in the fields, click Options and choose <Full Name> from the dropdown if your usual Primary Addressee format doesn't match these CRA requirements.
You've got your query, template, and document ready. Time to create receipts.
Good news: if you’ve ever run one-time receipts in database view, it’s the same. Make sure the right query is attached and go through the steps in Mail to export and create your receipt CSV. Pro tip: don’t mark gifts as Receipted until you’ve reviewed the output.
Now you can go into your word template and go through the steps under “Mailing” to attach the info from your csv, and merge into printed documents. Use that same CSV to output your envelope labels if you need them.
Email tip: Have Adobe and Word? Use "Merge to Adobe PDF" and check "Automatically send Adobe PDF files by email" to send receipts as email attachments.
Level Up Your Stewardship: Segment Your Donors
Instead of one query for all consolidated donors, try segmenting:
· Ongoing monthly donors
· Monthly donors with more or less than 12 gifts (catch new or cancelled donors)
· Multiple-gift donors who aren't on recurring schedules
Your donors will appreciate the extra personalization you can add to the cover letter.
CRA references:
· What information must be on an official donation receipt from a registered charity? - Canada.ca
Yes, it's work. But remember, you’ve got until Feb 28th to get these out, and once you nail the process, you're set. Future-you will thank present-you for getting organized now.
PS, check out our article on LetterBox if you want an even easier process for your year end receipting!
