Dan
As delivered, ebase does not have a receipt form for Canadian income tax
purposes. However, ebase does have acknowledgement letters which can be
readily designed to include a receipt for tax purposes. We simply put
the receipt at the bottom of an acknowledgement letter and use the
ebase-generated payment record number. Also, a separate "letter" can be
designed that is just a receipt. This solves your first question.
If, as your query suggests, an organization receives payments throughout
the year from the same member and you want to total those donations and
issue a single annual receipt, the solution has an additional twist. It
is easy to get a report of each individual's total deductible donations
for the year but it may take a little finessing to access that total for
use on an annual receipt. In some instances, the solution is simply to
use the year-to-date total for an individual in ebase. However, care
must be taken to ensure that this total contains only the tax-deductible
amounts. I believe there are responses on this list with suggestions
for developing annual totals for individuals. In our case, the number
of individuals requiring annual receipts is very small and we do a
manual receipt for them using an ebase report of their total annual tax
donations.
The Canadian Customs & Revenue Agency ("CCRA") has specifications for
the issue of receipts by registered charities. One requirement is that
a charity "must keep on file a copy of every receipt issued". There is
also a requirement for serially-numbered receipts. I have discussed
this with CCRA personnel and confirmed that, although the receipts need
to be numbered, computer-generated receipts for income tax purposes do
not necessarily need to be sequentially numbered. In other words, if
payments are received in ebase that are not eligible for an income tax
receipt, the gap in the sequence of income tax receipt numbers is not a
problem. As payments received can be designated in ebase as deductible
or non-deductible, a report can be printed showing all receipt numbers
issued that are eligible for tax purposes.
In ebase, we use the payment record number as the receipt number.
Re charities that issue computer-generated receipts, CCRA Guide RC4108
states that:
"A computer-stored copy of an official donation receipt (soft copy) will
be considered a "duplicate" for purposes of the Income Tax Act if the
following conditions are met:
. it contains all the necessary information required on the
contents of receipts as described above; and
. a charity can, at any time, print a copy of the receipt
without inputting any new data required on receipts."
A further excerpt from CCRA Guide RC-4108 states:
"Can a charity issue computer-generated receipts?
A registered charity can issue electronic official donation receipts as
long as they are readable and the reliability of the computer data
entries is sufficiently protected. Protection against unauthorized
changes to the data entries is the key security concern. An ideal
computer system should incorporate user authentication
(user-identifications validated by passwords) with access controls to
restrict entry to and modification of donor contribution records. We
recommend that donor records be stored on non-erasable media, such as
CD-ROMs, micro-fiche, or printouts, with copies kept off-site for
recovery purposes. The following precautions are also acceptable:
. Access to the donor records is protected by physical security.
That is, the computer donor files are stored on diskettes or removable
disks to which access is controlled by lock and key. Alternatively, a
separate computer system, which is accessible only by authorized
personnel, contains the records.
. Donor records are retained on erasable media such as disks or
tapes. Because these media are susceptible to accidental erasure or disk
crashes, regular copies of data are made and one set of these copies is
retained away from the original system."
The above specs may require additional ebase controls to ensure the
accuracy of the data entered including comparison of receipt totals in
ebase with those recorded in the accounting records and deposited in the
bank and controls over access to the ebase data.
In summary, we have found that Canadian tax receipt requirements are
readily met with ebase.
Gerry A Hodgson
Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network
c/o 8871 Gay Road
Richmond BC V6Y 2H8
Canada
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Cooperstock [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: January 5, 2002 8:37 AM
To: TechRocks Support
Subject: [support] ebase for Canadian Receipts
I supply another free program for charities, "Dan Cooperstock's
DONATION", at www.FreeDonationSoftware.org. I have a page on the web
site for info on other related programs, and I was thinking of posting
the following on that page:
----------------------------------
ebase is another free database program for non-profits, with over 16,000
registered users (as of Jan/2002). It has a lot more features than
DONATION, but correspondingly it is significantly more complex to use
and to learn to use. It says that it works in Canada and the U.S.A.
Although it can record donations, as well as a lot of other things that
DONATION does not record, it is not clear to me from a quick look that
it can create numbered charitable receipts as are needed in Canada. It
does assign what it calls a receipt number to each individual donation,
but I can't see how that would let you do year-end numbered receipts
listing the total donations from each donor.
-----------------------------------------
Is this 2nd paragraph correct? If I'm wrong, give me a hint how that
would be done.
Also, if I am right that my program is much easier to use for smaller
charities with fewer needs, is there any chance that ebase would like to
put a link to my site on their site? Who would I ask about that?
Thanks.
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