Want to create a Charitable Tax Receipt using the Sales Receipts. I tried using the templates available but they are not suitable. Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Donating to charitable organisations is a great way to give back to the community. I'll be happy to assist. QuickBooks Online offers a flexible platform where you can easily record your financial operations. To record donations or charitable contributions, follow the detailed steps in this article: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/community/Help-Articles/How-to-record-donations-or-charitable-contribu....

Reach out if you have any other questions.

[Frustrated 39]

We use QBO for our church accounting. Weekly donations are received. I would welcome help in printing a tax receipt for the annual total. 

[gcmcpa]

I thing the question being asked is how to issue a charitable donation receipt as the charitable organization ( believe the you are answering how to record donations you made). I have the same question as above... is there a way to customize sales receipts more so that it looks more like a charitable donation receipt and meets CRA requirments?

[CaitlinOG]

Hello gcmcpa, 

Thank you for joining this thread! QuickBooks Online gives you a number of options for customizing sales forms to meet your business needs. I can explain your options for generating donation receipts within QuickBooks Online. 

QuickBooks Online doesn't have a specific donation receipt template, but don't worry, our Sales Receipt template can be customized and used for this purpose. Here's how you can customize a sales receipt for donations:

• Go to the Gear icon and then select Custom Form Styles.
• Select New Style.
• Select a sales form type (in this case, select Sales Receipt).

You'll then adjust the design and content of the sales receipt to suit your needs. More information about this process can be found in our Community article Customize invoices, estimates, and sales receipts in QuickBooks Online. 

Alternatively, you can upload your own custom template file in .DOCX format. Here's how to do this:

• Go to the Gear icon and then select Custom Form Styles.
• Select New Style.
• Click Import style.
• When prompted to pick Invoice or Estimate, select Invoice.
• The next screen will include a detailed import guide with sample .DOCX files that you can use as a base for your template. I recommend downloading and reviewing these documents before proceeding. 
• After reviewing the import guide and preparing your custom template in .DOCX format, click the Browse button. 
• Locate the template, then click Next and follow the prompts to map your template fields to QuickBooks Online's fields.

If you're unsure what information your donation receipt template should include, check out Canada Revenue Agency's webpage regarding What information must be on an official donation receipt from a registered charity for further information. You can also check out the Community articles below for future reference:

• Track funds you receive from donors in QuickBooks Online

• Printing donor receipts

I hope this helps, please let me know if you have any other questions regarding this! 

[gcmcpa]

Thanks for the advice. I tried both methods. Using the "sales receipt" template supplied by QBO does not allow enough customization options to make the donation receipt acceptable by CRA (e.g. does not allow a signature to be imported, a "Balance Due" total appears and you can't delete which looks odd as this is a donation receipt not a call for cash). I also tried importing my own .docx custom template. This works great for getting the right requirements, however QBO only allows the custom style import for invoices or estimates. This is problematic because the invoice function generates an email in QBO that says "Amount Due" which is inappropriate because it is a donation receipt that acknowledged cash already received not a call for payment. Is there anyway to allow custom .docx styles for sales receipt styles (not just invoice or estimates)? Or is there anyway to change how the QBO email so that it does not say amount due? 

[PatriciaT]

Hi gcmcpa,

Thanks for following up with us. I know how important it's to have the display that you need on your sales forms. At the moment, there's isn't any option available to import custom sales receipts in the program, nor remove the amount due section you see in the QBO email. I can see how having these settings would have benefited your business, and I invite you to submit feedback directly to our engineers. Our goal is to always improve your user experience, and your opinion helps a lot with that.

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

[aherb1]

Has QBO been updated this year to address any of these problems with issuing Donor Tax Receipts?

[Trish_T]

Hi aherb1,

Thanks for joining in on this thread.  I can understand the necessity of being able to issue tax receipts for charitable donations.  Although QuickBooks Online allows you to customize forms to ensure the required elements are applied where needed, there currently isn't a specific sales receipt template for this purpose.  You may choose to upload your own template as indicated in a previous post.  If this is something you'd like to see in QuickBooks Online moving forward, I recommend providing feedback to our Development Team.  Go to the Gear in the top right and select Feedback.  You may also refer to this article to track funds received from donors in QuickBooks Online.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to reach back out.  We'd be happy to help!

[dquach]

Hi there, has there been any updates on this ticket?

I see a similar post about another Canadian charitable organization that wants to issue donation tax receipts straight from QBO but the templates or the allowable customizations still don't allow charities to import a signature that the desktop version of QB allowed for previously.

While the QB Team seemed to recognise and understand the need to stay compliant with the CRA and this particular issue of not being able to save a pdf straight from QBO with a signature added, the advice offered that we should check with our tax agency or our accountant about whether this information is actually needed to be CRA compliant, isn't actually helpful.

How many hours of an engineer or development is really needed to be able to add an image to a template? Can this be escalated or is there a place where users can vote on priorities?

Thanks!

[gcmcpa]

We were eventually able to get the custom template working after I posted this and have the signature loaded in the custom template. But my ticket was never responded to as resolved. Our current process of using custom templates is not perfect as some fields still don’t pull in correctly (eg the service date does not pull through) and we can’t send the donation receipts by email because the email shows up like an invoice we are requesting pay for (and the receipt shows a giant “paid” stamp on it when the payment is matched) so we have a cumbersome process where we have to generate a custom invoice, print to pdf before matching the payment (or else the paid stamp is imprinted on it), then edit the pdf to manually key in the fields that didn’t pull through correctly (eg service date), then lock the pdf so it can’t be tampered with, and finally email it to the donor. It is a super cumbersome process but unfortunately the best we can do as any external donor receipt apps we’ve tried aren’t great either. Yes, I also really wish the developers of QBO can make it more NPO friendly. 

[DSay]

I'm having the same problem as others in this discussion. If only I could add a signature to the sales receipt template, then it would work. But as it is, I'm not sure how I am going to issues hundreds of charitable donation reciepts. 

[lcyc18]

Hi there, I have imported a charitable tax receipt, created in a Word Document according to CRA standard, into QB as an invoice. The trick to send out the tax receipts without the Paid Stamp on them is to send them out before performing the "Receive payment" transaction. If we know the donations are received in the bank, we can confidently email out the tax receipts first. I copy myself in the emails so I have a good copy of the tax receipt just in case a donor ask for it again.

The signature of the authorized singing officer on the tax receipt can be typed into the Word Doc before importing. I just changed the font to Times New Roman or another slanted font. I believe this is acceptable to CRA.

If you are using the Service Date as the Issue Date of the tax receipt, you can try using the Due Date of the invoice instead. It works for me.

Hope it helps.

[lcyc18]

I forgot to mention that when we send out the charitable tax receipts as an "invoice" in QB, the email to the donors will show an Amount Due in the amount of the donation, that can be confusing to the donors. That's because we have not performed the "Receive payment" transaction. What I do is put a note in the message to tell the donors to ignore the Amount Due and just refer to the attachment for the tax receipt. This is the best work around I can think of, until QB come up with an import for custom sales receipts...

[gcmcpa]

Thanks for the suggestion of using "due date" instead of service date.  I am trying to modify our template... but unfortunately, I am working with QBO support as the import styles function is no longer working for us at all, not even with the earlier template I was able to upload as something must have changed. Hopefully they can resolve this for me as this is getting really frustrating. Thanks for your suggestion! 

[Susbis]

Has anyone found a solution to this problem?

i.e. Printing tax receipts for charitable donations to a non-profit organisation, that will be acceptable to CRA?

[sk82]

I am struggling with that also.  Just went from the desktop version to the online version and the desktop version is much more non-profit friendly.  I too cannot make the “sales” receipts to look like a donation receipt.  This should be addressed by quickbooks.  Hopefully soon! 

[AmandaGEPC]

Following up on this thread. Anyone come up with a solution yet? 

[Trish_T]

Hi AmandaGEPC,

Thanks for joining us here.   QuickBooks Online provides the option to send your customers a sales receipt or a statement.  There isn't a specific sales receipt template for the purpose of donations received.  Please don't hesitate to submit a suggestion to the Development Team.  Follow this link to Track funds you receive from donors in QuickBooks Online.

Feel free to post additional questions or concerns.  We'll be happy to help!