HMRC Compliance, Handled

HMRC has strict requirements. We know them inside out.

Gift Aid claims aren’t just about having the right data — they need to be submitted in a specific format with specific fields, or HMRC will reject them. Mistakes mean delays, resubmissions, and in the worst case, repayment demands. We built our system to guarantee compliance so you never have to worry about getting the format wrong.

Every claim file Gift Aid Boost generates is formatted to HMRC’s exact specifications. No manual checking, no guesswork, no risk of rejection due to a formatting error.

The Gift Aid schedule spreadsheet

HMRC requires Gift Aid claims via Charities Online in a specific spreadsheet format called the Gift Aid schedule (historically known as the R68 form). If you’ve ever tried to prepare one manually, you’ll know how exacting the requirements are — exact column orders, specific date formats, character limits, and strict rules about how every field is displayed. Get any of it wrong and the claim is rejected.

Our system generates these files automatically — formatted correctly every time, split into multiple files if needed, ready to upload directly to HMRC’s Charities Online portal. You never need to open a spreadsheet, adjust a column, or worry about whether a date is in the right format.

The 4-year window

HMRC allows Gift Aid claims going back 4 full tax years. For many charities, that represents a significant sum — years of eligible donations that were never claimed because nobody had time to process them.

Our system identifies every claimable donation within this window automatically. When you upload your historical records, we scan them against the 4-year limit and flag everything that’s eligible. Donations that have fallen outside the window are clearly marked so you know exactly what’s recoverable and what’s been lost.

Every month that passes without a claim, the oldest eligible donations fall off the end of the window and become permanently unclaimed. The sooner you start, the more you recover.

Monthly claim batches

Rather than submitting one large annual claim — which is risky if errors are found — we generate monthly claim batches. Each month, you download a ready-to-submit Gift Aid schedule spreadsheet and upload it to HMRC through Charities Online. HMRC processes the claim and pays your charity directly.

Smaller, more frequent claims mean faster payments to your charity and much easier error correction if anything needs adjusting. Instead of one annual claim where a single error could delay thousands of pounds, each month’s batch is manageable and independently verifiable.

Complete audit trail

HMRC audits a proportion of Gift Aid claims each year. When they do, they ask for a complete chain of evidence for every donation: the declaration, the donor’s details, the donation amount and date, the source file it came from, and the claim it was included in. They sample randomly and extrapolate any errors across all your claims — a few missing records can turn into a significant liability.

Every donation in your claim links back to its source. If HMRC ever queries a claim, you have the evidence ready immediately — you don’t need to dig through filing cabinets or search old emails. The complete trail is in your dashboard, clearly linked and instantly accessible.

This isn’t an afterthought. It’s built into every step of our process because we know that charities need to demonstrate compliance, not just achieve it.

Downloadable audit pack

From your dashboard, you can download a complete audit pack as a ZIP file — ready to hand to an HMRC auditor. It contains everything they could ask for:

• Claim summary — every monthly batch with amounts, dates, and status
• Donation register — every donation with the donor’s name, amount, date, which file it came from, and which claim batch it was included in
• Declaration register — every Gift Aid declaration with method (email click or uploaded record), full declaration text, timestamp, and whether it covers past, present, and future donations
• Donor register — every donor with their details, total donations, and declaration status
• Data lineage — field-level provenance showing exactly where each piece of donor data originated
• Source files — a record of every file uploaded, with file hash, uploader, row count, and processing status
• Outreach trail — the complete lifecycle of every declaration email: when it was sent, opened, clicked, and confirmed

The audit pack covers your entire claim history, or you can filter it by individual batch or tax year. Every file opens cleanly in Excel and is formatted for UK dates and currency.

HMRC requires charities to keep Gift Aid records for 6 years. Our platform retains all declaration, donation, and claim data for the full 6-year period — so the evidence is there whenever you need it.

Error correction built in

If a claim needs adjusting — perhaps a donor’s circumstances changed, or an amount was incorrect in the original data — our system handles the correction automatically in the next monthly batch. Adjustments are formatted to HMRC’s requirements and clearly identified as corrections.

No manual spreadsheet editing. No guesswork about the right format for adjustments. No risk of compounding an error by trying to fix it by hand.

What you need to do

Upload your donor data as CSV or Excel files. Download your claim spreadsheet each month and submit it to HMRC. That’s it.

We handle everything in between — however messy your records are, we turn them into compliant claim files ready for Charities Online.

Start claiming and recover what your charity is owed. Or get in touch if you have questions about HMRC compliance.