Gift Aid and GASDS
Claim season is painful when you still have to reconstruct who declared.
If you are the treasurer, the hard part of Gift Aid is rarely the 25p arithmetic. It is the week you open last year’s envelopes and try to remember who signed, which gifts are eligible, and which anonymous cash might count under GASDS. ChurchPay captures the declaration when the gift is made, records GASDS evidence when you close a service, and then exports an HMRC-ready claim pack. You still submit that pack through your existing HMRC process. ChurchPay does not file the claim on Charities Online for you.
What ChurchPay does
Three jobs, in the order a treasurer actually feels them.
1
Declarations happen at the gift
When someone gives online, at the Sunday kiosk, or on a donate form, they can complete an enduring Gift Aid declaration on that same screen. ChurchPay stores the wording they agreed to, the time, and the evidence against that donor. Paper slips can still be scanned onto the record.
2
GASDS is logged when you close the service
Loose cash with no donor name cannot be Gift Aided. Those collections may qualify under the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme instead. ChurchPay records the anonymous cash against that service, so the evidence is dated to Sunday rather than rebuilt from a paying-in book later.
3
You export a claim pack, then you file
The pack is a ZIP: a ChR1-shaped CSV of eligible gifts, copies of new declarations, and a manifest. You, or your adviser, still submit the claim through HMRC. ChurchPay does not log in to Charities Online or file the claim for you.
A donor can make a Gift Aid declaration on the same screen as the gift.
Online, at the foyer kiosk, or from a QR code on a pew card, the giver can complete an enduring declaration in that moment. Once a valid declaration is on file, later eligible gifts from that donor can use it, so you are not chasing a new form every Sunday. If they prefer paper, your team can still scan the slip onto their record. ChurchPay snapshots the wording they agreed to, which is the evidence you would otherwise hunt for at claim season.
Anonymous cash from a service is logged against that service for GASDS.
Loose cash with no donor name cannot be Gift Aided, because there is no declaration. Those collections may qualify under the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme instead. When you close a service in ChurchPay, the system works out the anonymous cash that may be eligible and keeps that evidence on the service, not in a side spreadsheet. Whether a particular collection is eligible, and how much of the annual cap you have used, still follows HMRC's rules for your church. ChurchPay does not invent those figures. See GOV.UK on GASDS for the current limits.
ChurchPay exports an HMRC-ready claim pack, and you still submit it yourself.
The pack is a ZIP you download: a ChR1-shaped CSV of eligible gifts, copies of new declarations and their evidence, and a manifest that explains what is inside. When a batch includes a closed service with anonymous cash, a GASDS summary can sit in the same folder. You, or your adviser, then file the claim through HMRC's process. Some church products can submit a claim straight to HMRC Online Services or Charities Online. ChurchPay does not. A gift can only sit in one claim batch, so you cannot double-claim it in the software.
Two treasurer notes on church-pay.com go further: how to keep Gift Aid and GASDS without rebuilding a spreadsheet, and how to prepare the claim pack before you open Charities Online. Sunday giving, including the kiosk and QR codes, is on the giving page.
We can walk a real claim pack with your treasurer in a 30-minute demo.
You will see declarations attached to gifts, GASDS recorded on a closed service, and the export you would file. ChurchPay will not submit that claim to Charities Online for you, and we will not invent reclaim totals.