Create a Donor Management Tax Receipt Mailing

Let's Learn:

• Understanding Receipting Options
• Creating a Donor Management Tax Receipt Mailing

Understanding Receipting Options 

When sending receipts for donations or transactions, you can choose between letter mailing and email mailing, depending on your organization’s needs. 

Letter mailing sends a physical receipt via postal service, providing a tangible and formal record for the recipient. This method is often preferred for larger donations or when a printed acknowledgment is required, though delivery may take several days and incurs printing and postage costs. 

Email mailing, on the other hand, delivers a digital receipt directly to the recipient’s inbox, allowing for instant delivery at minimal cost. It is convenient, eco-friendly, and easy for recipients to save or forward. Choosing the right receipting method involves considering speed, donor preference, formality, and cost to ensure acknowledgments are timely and effective.

Creating a Donor Management Tax Receipt Mailing

Step 1: Access the Mailing Tool

After creating your letter template, navigate to the Donor Management > Mailings area. Click on “Create Mailing” to begin the process of sending your letters.

Step 2: Choose the type of mailing you want to send. For this scenario, we are sending physical letters to constituents, so select “Letter.”

In this example, we are sending year-end tax receipts, which have all been marked to be receipted on a mailing list.

Step 2: So, next we will select "Mailing List" and "Receipts." The mailing list that we had added the donations to was called "Donation Receipts", we would like to combine all past giving onto one receipt, so we select "send only once to constituents (even if they have multiple gifts)." And we are looking to send all unsent receipts.

Step 3: Click "Next" and uncheck any recipients you don’t wish to send receipt to. Click "Next" again to continue. 

Note: You can uncheck all by clicking on the checkbox to the left of the Recipient Name heading.

You can also click on the "Uncheck Recipients" dropdown to uncheck any or all recipients that fall into these categories: status Not "Active", status deceased, status inactive, recipients with critical notes, recipients who have email.

Step 4. Select Letter Template (ex. Canada Tax Receipt), as well as a header and footer if you choose to add those elements. Selecting the template(s) will generate the content from the template into the Message below.

Step 5: Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on "Attach Receipt". 

Step 6: The "Attach Receipt" window will appear with a list of all of your active Tax Receipt templates. Select the one you wish to attach to this mailing and click on "Attach Receipt".

Note: It is suggested that you click on "View Draft" and download the letter before you process the letters. If any updates need to be done after viewing the draft, you can go back to the template and make those changes, or, if the changes only need to be made for this mailing, and not saved to the template, you can make the changes directly to this message.

Step 7: Click "Process Letters" to process the mailing. This will lead you back to the main Mailings page, where you can see that the mailing is processing.

You'll be taken to the main Mailing screen where the Mailing History will show the processing status.

Step 8: Once the status shows "Letter Sent" you'll want to click on the letter you just processed, and the name of the letter will show on the right-hand side of the screen. You'll see the name and address for each recipient. Click on the "Download Letter(s)" button.

You'll download the cover letter and the tax receipts separately. 

Step 9: Select the file you wish to download first and select the format you wish to download the file as (Microsoft Word or PDF), and click on the "Download Letter(s)" button.

Step 10: After downloading the letter(s) and tax receipts you can either save them to your computer to print at your leisure or print them out now.

Once the mailing has been processed, a note will appear in the Activity tab of each constituent's profile to acknowledge that the receipt was generated. 

Step 11: Clicking on the note will open a window that will show you information about the mailing. From here you can access the mailing list and download a copy of the tax receipt letter.

After processing a tax receipt mailing, when you view the Payment Overview you will see that the receipt was issued and will be able to clear the Download the Receipt or Clear the Receipt.