Features / CRA donation receipts
Receipt season without the spreadsheet
Every gift you record all year already knows the donor, the date, the fund, and the amount. Vestry turns those records into official donation receipts the CRA will accept — in one sitting, not one February.
From the counting table to the receipt
It starts on Sunday. The counting team enters the offering as a batch: envelope number, amount, enter, next envelope. Cheques, cash, e-transfers, and pre-authorized giving all go in the same way, each gift landed in its fund and tied to a member record.
Because giving and accounting are the same books, there's no year-end export, no matching two systems, no "the donor list says $2,340 but the ledger says $2,290" mystery at 11 p.m. The receipt totals are the ledger totals. They can't disagree.
At year end you review, click generate, and every donor gets one official receipt for the year, numbered in sequence. Reprints and corrections are tracked, since the CRA cares about replacement receipts too.
On every receipt
- “Official receipt for income tax purposes” wording
- Your charity's name, address, and CRA registration number
- A unique serial number on every receipt, with no gaps
- Donor name and address, eligible amount, and year
- Date and place of issue, and an authorized signature line
- The CRA website reference the regulations call for
Requirements for official donation receipts are set by the CRA; see canada.ca for the current rules. You stay the issuer — Vestry does the bookkeeping.
Why churches leave their old receipt process
Ask a treasurer what they dread and receipt season comes up fast. The typical setup is accounting in one program, donors in another, and a mail-merge template someone built in 2014. Every year it mostly works. The years it doesn't are the ones donors remember.
A wrong receipt isn't just embarrassing. Official receipts are a privilege of charitable registration, and sloppy ones are a compliance risk the CRA can act on. One set of books, one numbering sequence, and required fields filled in automatically take most of that risk off the table.
Next step
Make this the last receipt season you dread
Start recording giving in Vestry now, and January becomes a review-and-click job.