Filing to HRMC

Filing is the final step of a Gift Aid claim. Once you have reviewed the donations, confirmed which ones should be included, and locked the claim, you submit the donor and donation details to HMRC so the tax repayment can be made to your charity.

You can file a claim in one of two ways:

• Submit directly from infoodle to HMRC.
• Download the donation data from infoodle, paste it into HMRC's Gift Aid Donation Schedule (GADS) spreadsheet, and submit it to HMRC yourself.

What does filing a Gift Aid claim do?
Filing sends the approved list of donors and donations to HMRC so they can process the Gift Aid repayment for your charity. It is the final step after checking and locking the claim.

Before you start

Role Permissions

• Access to Finance area: lets you into the Finance section at all.
• Manage, Read and report on transactions: needed to review, finalise and file a claim.

You need both. Users who are members of a cluster can look at claims but cannot file them, whatever else they hold.

You will also need the following:

• A claim that has no outstanding errors in it.
• A claim period that has already finished.
• If you are sending the claim straight to HMRC, your Gift Aid settings need to be complete. See Gift Aid Settings.
• If you are filing yourself, a copy of HMRC's Gift Aid Donation Schedule (GADS) spreadsheet and an HMRC Charities Online sign-in. Both come from HMRC, not from infoodle.

The two ways to file

Filing manually needs no Gift Aid settings at all. Filing direct needs them, because those details are what identifies your charity to HMRC.

Step 1: Finalise the claim

A claim can only be filed once it is Finalised. Until then infoodle treats it as still being worked on.

1. Click or hover on Finance on the main menu bar on the left.
2. Click Gift Aid. The Claims list opens.
3. Find the claim you want to file in the list.
4. Click the Action button on that row.
5. Click Review ....
6. Open the Errors tab.
7. Check the tab is empty.
8. Open the Not Claimable tab and check it is also empty
9. Open the Claimable tab and check the donations listed are the ones you expect.
10. Click Save as Final.

infoodle takes you back to the claims list and the claim now shows as Finalised.

If you cannot see "as Final"

The as Final option is hidden, rather than greyed out, when the claim is not ready. There are two reasons for that.

• The claim has donor records with problems. A red message reads There are some errors in this data, you will not be able to file this claim until they are cleared. Click it to go to the Errors tab and fix the records. Most of these are a missing house name or number, a missing postcode, or a name that HMRC will not accept. See Valid Field Formats for what each one needs to look like.
• The claim period has not started yet, or has not finished yet. The message reads With these dates, this claim cannot be filed yet. Wait until both dates have passed.

There is one more limit worth knowing about if your charity is a large one. infoodle limits a single claim to 25,000 donations. If the Claimable tab holds more than that, the review screen tells you how many there are and says You need to reduce it to less than 25,000 by changing the Period start or end for this claim before you can submit it.

Step 2: Open the filing screen

1. Go back to Finance → Gift Aid → Claims.
2. Click the Action button
3. Click File to HMRC ....

File to HMRC ... only appears on a claim that is Finalised. It is not there on a draft claim, and it is not there on a claim you have already filed.

The File Gift Aid screen opens. Before you file anything, read it over:

• Period start and Period end: the dates the claim covers.
• Total amount and Total claim: what your donors gave, and 25p of tax for every £1 of it.
• Total Over claim Adjustment: only shown if the claim has an adjustment on it. This is Gift Aid your charity has already claimed and has to give back, so it comes off Total claim. What HMRC actually repays is Total claim less this amount. You add an adjustment with Include an adjustment on the claim review screen.
• Review Claim Details: takes you back to the list of donations if you want one more look.
• Authorised Officer and Charity: a read-only summary of what infoodle will tell HMRC about you. If any of it is wrong, click edit settings and fix it before you file.
• File this claim: the two options, direct or manual. Pick one and the matching buttons appear.

Step 3: Choose how to file

Pick one of the two options below. They are not interchangeable: the direct route sends your whole claim, and the manual route hands you a donation list that you have to complete yourself.

Option 1: File direct to HMRC

infoodle signs in to HMRC for you, sends the claim, waits for HMRC's answer and shows it to you.

Check your settings first

1. Click edit settings on the filing screen, or go to Finance > Gift Aid > Settings.
2. On the Charitable Organisation tab, check every box is filled in.
3. Check Submission mode is set to Live.
4. Open the Authorised official tab.
5. Check the details are those of the person HMRC has registered as your Authorised Official.
6. Click Save if you changed anything.
7. Go back to the filing screen.

The id and password on the Authorised official tab are the Charities Online user ID and password HMRC issued to that person when they registered with HMRC. They are not an infoodle login.

What Test mode is for

Submission mode has two settings, Test and Live, and a new site starts on Test.

While it is set to Test, your claim goes to HMRC's test service instead of the real one. HMRC checks it for problems and answers you, but nothing is lodged and no money is repaid. Test mode also ignores the Authorised official id and password you typed in and uses HMRC's own test sign-in details instead, so a test run tells you nothing about whether your own HMRC sign-in works.

Set Submission mode to Live when you are ready to send a claim you actually want paid.

Send the claim

1. Select File electronically direct to HMRC.
2. Click Submit to HMRC.
3. The button shows it is working while infoodle sends the claim and waits for HMRC's answer.
4. The button is replaced by This claim has been successfully filed.

If HMRC turns the claim down, infoodle shows you their reply on screen and the claim stays Finalised so you can put the problem right and send it again. HMRC's replies are about your charity details or your donor data, so the fix is either on the Gift Aid settings screens or on the claim's Errors tab.

Option 2: File manually using the HMRC spreadsheet

Use this if you would rather send the claim through HMRC's Charities Online service yourself, or if direct filing is not an option for you.

1. Select File by manually submitting an excel file.
2. Click Download.
3. Open the file infoodle downloads. It is a CSV file named after the claim period, for example GADS_Claim_2015-04-01 to 2015-04-30.csv.
4. Open HMRC's Gift Aid Donation Schedule (GADS) spreadsheet alongside it.
5. Find the donor rows in infoodle's file. They start at row 5, below two title rows and a blank row.
6. Select those rows starting at the second column. The first column of every row is blank, and copying it across shifts every value one column to the right in HMRC's schedule.
7. Copy the rows.
8. Paste them into the donation section of the GADS spreadsheet.
9. Fill in any overseas address or BFPO postcode the file left blank.
10. If your claim shows a Total Over claim Adjustment, declare that amount to HMRC yourself as part of the claim you are submitting.
11. Submit the claim through HMRC's Charities Online service. This part happens on HMRC's own website, not in infoodle, so there is no infoodle button for it.
12. Come back to infoodle, to the same File Gift Aid screen.
13. Click Mark this claim as filed.

What is in the downloaded file

The on-screen option calls it an excel file, but what downloads is a CSV file, which every spreadsheet program opens.

The file holds one row per donation, in the order HMRC's schedule wants them: title, first name, last name, house name or number, postcode, a column for aggregated donations, a column for sponsored events, the donation date and the amount.

Above the donor rows are two title rows and a blank row, so the donations start at row 5. Every row also starts with a blank column, so the nine columns HMRC wants are the second through the tenth.

Donors with an address outside the UK have an X in the postcode column, which is what HMRC asks for.

What "Mark this claim as filed" does

It records the claim in infoodle as filed. It does not contact HMRC and it does not send anything, so it is only the second half of the job: you send the spreadsheet, then you tell infoodle you have sent it.

Doing this closes the claim off in infoodle and lets the next claim period start, which is why it matters even though HMRC never sees it.

What happens after you file

Both routes leave the claim in the same state in infoodle. The claim is now filed, and:

• The claims list shows it as Filed to HMRC, with the date and the name of the person who filed it.
• Its Action menu no longer offers File to HMRC ... or Delete.
• The next claim period becomes available to work on. Until a claim is filed, the period after it sits there reading Waiting for previous claim to be filed.
• You can still open the claim with Action → Review ... to look up what was in it. The screen is read-only from here on and shows Filed Claim at the top.
• If you sent the claim direct, the review screen also shows an HMRC Response section, with links to view the full submission and HMRC's full reply. Claims you marked as filed yourself have nothing to show there, because infoodle never spoke to HMRC.

If you use Xero, you can raise an invoice in Xero for the amount HMRC will repay. A Create Invoice button appears on the filing screen straight after you file, and on the claim's review screen from then on. See Generate Xero Invoice For Gift Aid Claims.

If you filed a claim by mistake

A filed claim can be reset, which puts the donations in it back into the pool so they can be claimed again on a later claim. See Resetting a Claim.

A reset takes the claim back to Started and clears more than the status. It removes the record of when the claim was filed and who filed it, clears any over claim adjustment you had entered, and unlinks every donation from the claim. If you filed manually, that record of the filing is the only one infoodle holds, because infoodle never spoke to HMRC on your behalf.

Resetting only changes infoodle. If the claim really did reach HMRC, sort that out with HMRC as well.

Common questions

Why is there no "File to HMRC" option on my claim?

The claim is not Finalised yet. Open it with Action > Review ..., then Save > as Final. If as Final is missing too, the claim still has errors in it or its period has not finished.

Do I have to fix every error before I can file?

Yes. A claim with outstanding donor errors cannot be finalised, and only a finalised claim can be filed. See Valid Field Formats.

Will a test submission claim my money?

No. While Submission mode is Test the claim goes to HMRC's test service, which checks it and replies but repays nothing. It is still not a harmless dry run: infoodle records the claim as Filed to HMRC and the donations in it drop out of every later claim until you reset the claim.

Does Test mode use my own HMRC sign-in details?

No. In Test mode infoodle uses HMRC's own test sign-in details, not the id and password on the Authorised official tab. Your own details are only used once Submission mode is Live.

Is the file I download the same claim that direct filing sends?

No. The download is a donation list only. It leaves out the over claim adjustment, leaves the address column empty for an overseas donor with no house name or number, and leaves the postcode column empty for a BFPO address. Filing direct fills in all three. If you file manually, supply them yourself before you send the claim to HMRC.

I filed the spreadsheet myself. Does infoodle know?

Not until you tell it. Go back to the filing screen and click Mark this claim as filed, or the claim stays Finalised and the next claim period stays locked.

Can I file a claim before its period has finished?

No. infoodle shows With these dates, this claim cannot be filed yet and hides the as Final option until the period dates have passed.

Next steps

Once the claim is filed, the next claim period opens up and you can start reviewing the donations that have come in since. If you also collect small cash donations, look at the Small Donation Scheme, which is claimed separately.