Gift Aid

What is Gift Aid?#

Gift Aid lets your group reclaim 25p from HMRC for every £1 donated by a UK taxpayer. For a Scout group collecting hundreds of pounds in subscriptions and donations each year, this adds up to a meaningful amount — a mid-sized group can leave anywhere from £500 to £2,000 a year on the table if declarations aren't kept up to date.

How Gift Aid works in Scoutworks#

Three things have to come together for a payment to be reclaimable:

1. The payment is flagged as Gift Aid eligible by you.
2. The parent has a valid declaration on file at the time the payment was made.
3. The treasurer exports the claim in HMRC's R68 format and submits it through Charities Online.

Scoutworks gives you one place to see all three at once: the Gift Aid tab on the Accounting page. From there you can spot families without a declaration, send them an invite, and generate the HMRC export when you're ready to claim.

The Gift Aid tab — your dashboard#

Open Accounting → Gift Aid to see the state of Gift Aid across your group at a glance. The tab is visible to Group Admins and users with treasurer access.

Three summary tiles run across the top:

If coverage is low, an amber warning card appears below the tiles with a projected estimate of what you're leaving unclaimed — based on the eligible donations from undeclared families. It's a quick prompt to start chasing declarations before the tax year closes.

The members table#

Below the warning card is a family-aggregated table — one row per active member, with the parent(s) attached. Where a member has more than one parent, a declaration by any one parent counts as a declaration for the whole family.

Use the search box and section filter in the toolbar to narrow things down — same controls as the Ledger tab. Pagination at the bottom keeps things fast even for large groups.

Drilling into a family#

Click any row to open a side sheet with the family's declaration details — one section per parent, showing whether they have a declaration on file, the date it was signed, and the total eligible donations linked to it.

For undeclared parents, the sheet gives you a quick way to ask — see the next section.

Requesting a declaration from a parent#

When a parent on the dashboard doesn't yet have a declaration, you can prompt them directly. Two ways:

• From the family row — click the ⋯ (three dots) menu on the right of the row and choose Request declaration. Scoutworks composes a pre-filled email to each undeclared parent on that family.
• From the family sheet — click the Request declaration button next to a parent who hasn't declared.

The email opens in your usual mail app with the body already drafted — a short explanation of Gift Aid, why it costs the parent nothing, and a link straight to their declaration form. Edit the wording if you'd like; otherwise send as-is.

Scoutworks records each invite you send so you can see at a glance who's already been asked. If a parent doesn't act on the first email, you can send another — the dashboard doesn't limit you.

Flagging payments as Gift Aid eligible#

A payment only counts towards Gift Aid if you tell Scoutworks it's eligible. You can do this in three places:

• One-off payment requests — when you create the request, tick Gift Aid eligible.
• Recurring subscriptions — when you set up or edit the plan, tick Gift Aid eligible.
• Manual transactions — when you record income in the Add Transaction dialog, use the Gift Aid fields to flag it.

When parents are asked automatically#

As well as the invites you send from the dashboard, Scoutworks asks parents for a declaration automatically when they first run into an eligible payment. This keeps the form out of the way until it's actually relevant.

There are two automatic prompts:

If the parent dismisses the dialog or ignores the banner, Scoutworks keeps showing them. The dialog reappears every time the parent comes back to pay an eligible one-off. The banner stays on their dashboard until a declaration exists.

Once a parent submits a declaration, both prompts disappear and every future eligible payment from that parent is linked automatically.

What parents see in My Finances#

Parents have their own Gift Aid tab in My Finances → Gift Aid, where they can manage their declarations directly — without waiting for a prompt at payment time.

For each Scout group their children belong to, parents see:

• Their current declaration status — Declared with the date signed, or No declaration with a button to add one.
• The name and address on file for the declaration, in case anything needs updating.
• Declare, Edit and Cancel actions where relevant.

If a parent has children in more than one group, each group has its own card, because the Gift Aid declaration is between the parent and that specific Scout group — not Scoutworks.

Editing a declaration#

If a parent's name or address changes, they can update the declaration in place without cancelling and starting again. From the group card, they click Edit, update the relevant fields, and save. The change applies to all future eligible payments — past payments stay linked to the declaration as it was at the time.

Cancelling a declaration#

A parent can cancel their declaration at any time from the group card — for example, if they're no longer paying enough UK tax to support a Gift Aid claim. They click Cancel declaration, pick a reason, and confirm.

The reason options match the wording HMRC uses on its own Gift Aid forms:

• Withdrawn — the parent simply wants to stop.
• Address has changed — usually followed by the parent declaring again with the new address.
• No longer pay sufficient tax — the HMRC-required reason for parents who no longer pay enough Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax to cover the Gift Aid being reclaimed.

Future eligible payments aren't linked to Gift Aid from the cancellation date onwards. Past linked payments are unaffected — they were valid at the time and stay in your records.

Helping parents with their Self Assessment#

Higher- and additional-rate taxpayers can claim additional tax relief on their Gift Aid donations through Self Assessment — but only if they know how much they've given.

The parent's Gift Aid tab includes a Tax year summary card with the current tax year plus the previous four, showing what they donated and how much Gift Aid each Scout group reclaimed.

Each row has a small copy button that puts a one-line summary on the parent's clipboard — for example:

There's also a Copy all years button at the bottom that copies every row at once, ready to paste into their Self Assessment notes.

Manual override — for declarations you hold outside Scoutworks#

Sometimes the declaration lives on paper or in a spreadsheet rather than in Scoutworks — a long-standing donor who signed a form years ago, a one-off cash donation from a Gift Aided source you collected at a fundraiser, or any donor you can't ask to fill in the in-app form. The Manual override option on transactions lets you mark income as Gift Aid eligible without linking it to an in-app declaration, while keeping a clear record that you — not a parent — vouched for it.

Manual override is only available to Group Admins and users with treasurer access, because it shifts responsibility for holding the declaration onto whoever ticked the box.

Setting a manual override on a transaction#

1. Open Add Transaction (or Edit Transaction) for an income entry.
2. Expand the Gift Aid eligibility section.
3. Toggle Mark as Gift Aid eligible.
4. In the Gift Aid Type dropdown, choose Manual override.

An orange callout appears confirming what you're attesting to:

Save the transaction. In the Transactions list, the row now shows a "Manual" badge with an orange shield icon — visually distinct from the green "Declaration" badge that in-app declarations get.

What you're agreeing to#

Choosing Manual override is a self-attestation. You're confirming that:

• You hold a valid, signed Gift Aid declaration for this donor.
• The declaration was in force on the date of the donation.
• You have the donor's name, address and postcode available for the HMRC export.

If HMRC ever ask to see the declaration, the obligation is on you (or your group's treasurer) to produce it. Scoutworks doesn't store any donor details for manual rows.

What's in the declaration form#

The Gift Aid Declaration dialog captures the details HMRC requires:

After the parent submits, they're returned to the payment flow they started. If they came in via the Pay Now button on a one-off, the payment continues from where it paused.

Generating the HMRC export#

When you're ready to submit a claim, click Generate HMRC export in the Gift Aid tab toolbar (or open the Finance Actions dropdown and choose Gift Aid Report).

1. Pick the date range you're claiming for.
2. Review the preview — eligible transactions grouped by donor with totals.
3. Download the file in HMRC R68(GAD) format.

Only payments where the parent had an active declaration at the time the payment was made appear in the export. If a parent makes a declaration later, future payments are picked up but earlier ones aren't backdated.

Use this file when submitting your Gift Aid claim through HMRC's Charities Online portal.

Finishing manual-override rows before submitting to HMRC#

If any of the eligible transactions in your date range were marked Manual override, the export preview shows an orange warning telling you how many — for example:

The downloaded .ods file follows the HMRC R68(GAD) layout. Manual rows appear in the same place as everything else, but their donor name, address and postcode cells are left blank for you to fill in from your own records. The file also includes a separate Manual Overrides sheet listing those rows on their own, so you can see at a glance which ones need finishing before you submit.

Gift Aid in Insights#

The Insights page has a Gift Aid section under the Finance tab — a higher-level view of the same data, useful when you're reporting to your trustees or planning a claim.

It contains:

• Three summary tiles — Lifetime claimable, Declaration coverage, This tax year — matching the tiles on the dashboard.
• A tax-year breakdown table — Gift Aid reclaimable for each of the last five tax years, with a reminder of HMRC's four-year backdating window so you don't miss the deadline on older claims.
• Top contributing families — the families generating the most Gift Aid value, each linking through to their row on the Accounting → Gift Aid tab so you can dig into the detail.

The insights view is read-only — actions like requesting declarations and generating the export still happen from the dashboard tab.

What's next#

• Accounting and Bookkeeping — record and manage transactions.
• Budgets and Financial Reports — other financial reports.
• Charity Registration — adding your charity number so Gift Aid claims are accepted.
• Payments and Direct Debit for Parents — the parent-side payment experience.