What HMRC actually requires
HMRC's Charities Online service accepts Gift Aid claims either through the online form (one donation at a time, fine for tiny charities) or via a CSV schedule upload (for any church doing more than a handful of donations). The CSV has a fixed schema: Title, First name, Last name, House name or number, Postcode, Aggregated donations, Sponsored event, Donation date, Donation amount. Get the column order or formatting wrong and HMRC rejects the whole batch.
Declarations are the legal foundation
A donor must have a Gift Aid declaration on file that covers the donation date. Without one, the donation isn't eligible. Modern Gift Aid declarations cover 'all donations I've made in the past four years and all donations I'll make in the future' until the donor cancels — so you generally only collect a declaration once per donor. Good software stores the declaration with the exact wording shown to the donor at the time, plus a frozen address snapshot, because HMRC requires the declaration to remain consistent with the donor record at the time of the donation.
GASDS — the small donations top-up
The Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme lets you claim 25% on small cash and contactless donations under £30 each, up to a per-tax-year cap (currently £8,000 of donations, so up to £2,000 of GASDS reclaim). Claims have to be made within two years of the end of the tax year the donations fell into. Good software tracks GASDS-eligible donations separately and prevents double-claiming.
What good Gift Aid software actually does
Three jobs. (1) Captures declarations on the giving page with the donor's address, with the legal wording timestamped and frozen. (2) Tracks each donation against the donor's active declaration and excludes anything ineligible (wrong currency, no declaration, declaration not covering the date). (3) Generates the HMRC Charities Online CSV in the exact schedule format on demand, with already-claimed donations automatically excluded. If your software does only step (1) you're paying for a glorified spreadsheet.
Common rejection reasons
(1) Postcode malformed (use full UK format, no spaces removed). (2) House name or number missing — HMRC needs at least one address identifier alongside the postcode. (3) Donation date in the wrong format (it must be DD/MM/YYYY, not YYYY-MM-DD). (4) Aggregated donations field used incorrectly — only put a value here if you're aggregating multiple sub-£20 donations from the same donor on the same day. (5) Currency mismatch — only GBP donations are eligible.
How MosesTab handles it
MosesTab captures Gift Aid declarations on your giving page with frozen address snapshots and timestamped legal wording. Each donation is auto-linked to the donor's active declaration. The treasurer clicks 'Generate this quarter's claim' and downloads a CSV in HMRC's exact Charities Online schedule format. Already-claimed donations are excluded automatically. Once the CSV is uploaded to the Government Gateway and HMRC pays out, the treasurer enters the HMRC reference and paid amount and the claim is reconciled.