Overview
We know that the stress of tax season can be overwhelming for non-profits, so we make it easy to mail professional tax summaries. In this article, we'll explain how you can…
- See exactly which donors can receive a tax summary via mail, and which ones can't
- Include a cover letter with your tax summary to include a call-to-action or year-in-review
- Automatically log on donors’ profiles that you sent them their tax summaries
Note: This feature is specifically geared towards Kindful users based in Canada who have CRA mode enabled.
Linked Articles:
- Finding Gifts That Can/Cannot Be Receipted
Enabling CRA Mode
On Kindful's General Settings page
- Add your Tax ID/CRA # in the Tax ID Field.
- Enter a postal code and ensure your account’s Country is set to Canada.
- Upload a Transaction Signature Image. (Scroll to the Images section, and the last option you'll see is Transaction Receipt Signature.)
On Kindful's Transaction Settings page:
- In the Receipts section, enable the “Include PDF…” option.
- Set the PDF Receipt Template to "Official Tax Receipt."
Best practices to prepare your data
Before you get started sending your tax summaries, it's important that the data in your Kindful account is clean, and that your account settings are accurate. Complete some or all of the steps below before proceeding:
✅ Enter all your donations from the previous year into your account.
✅ Merge your duplicate contacts. Learn more about merging here.
✅ Create a cover letter in your letter templates.
✅ Make sure your mailing addresses are up-to-date.
✅ Verify your organization's information in your General Settings.
✅ Verify your account has CRA Mode enabled.
Creating your cover letter
When your donors receive their tax summaries, it's best to include a cover letter to add a personal touch. Your cover letter is an opportunity to include a call-to-action, a year-in-review, or your vision for your organization in the coming year.
Create this cover letter using an email/letter template. Learn more about letter templates here.
It's important that the email/letter template you choose for your tax summaries does not include any dynamic tags related to transactions since your tax summary will already display details on the donor’s past year of giving. Do not include the following tags:
- PURCHASE_INFO_FOR_RECEIPT
- PREV_YEAR_TRANSACTION_INFO
- LAST_TRANSACTION_INFO
- TRANSACTION_INFO_FOR_RECEIPT
- YTD_TRANSACTION_INFO
You have the option to create a cover letter separately from your Tax Summary flow. For the mailed summaries, you can create a mail merge from the contacts page to generate a cover letter only. To do that, use the filters to find the contacts who received summaries, then do the mail merge with the updated cover letter.
Sending Your Tax Summaries
To access your Tax Summaries Tool, go to Communication > Tax Summaries.
Here, we've broken down your previous year's donors into three sections:
- Donors who cannot receive a Tax Summary due to an error (no email, no mailing address or transactions in a different currency)
- Donors who can be emailed a Tax Summary
- Donors who must be mailed a Tax Summary
Section 1: "# contacts have errors"
Characteristics of the Contacts that have "errors"
- They have at least one transaction on their contact record in the previous calendar year
- They do not have an email address
- They do not have a full mailing address
- Their contact profile indicates that their email address is undeliverable
Actions
- View Contacts - This button takes you to a filtered view of the contacts who meet the criteria above.
Characteristics of the Contacts that cannot be sent a tax summary due to having transactions in a currency that is different than your organization's default currency.
- Kindful will indicate your default currency in this section
- We may also notate that some transactions are simply not eligible for a receipt
Actions
- View the contacts who meet the criteria above
- View Transactions - This button takes you to a filtered view of the transactions that meet the criteria above
Section 2: "Email Tax Summaries"
There is a tab along the top of the page to "Email Tax Summaries". Here you will see how many contacts you have that are eligible to receive an emailed tax summary. These donors must have a tax deductible donation in the specified tax year as well as a valid email address.
Of Note: If no contacts are eligible to receive an emailed tax summary, you will see a message indicating this.
Characteristics of the Contacts in this section
- They have at least one transaction on their contact record in the previous calendar year
- They have an email address that has not been marked as undeliverable
- They have no transactions in a different currency than that of which your organization is set
Actions
- View Contacts - This button takes you to a filtered view of the contacts who meet the criteria above.
- Get Started (found on the first tab) - This button allows you to do the following:
- Include a cover letter
- Set an Email Subject line and Reply To email
- Email your donors their Tax Summaries
Section 3: "Print and Mail Tax Summaries"
There is a tab along the top of the page to "Print and Mail Tax Summaries". Here you will see how many contacts you have that are eligible to receive a printed tax summary. These donors must have a tax deductible donation in the specified tax year as well as a valid mailing address and no email address on their contact.
Of Note: If no contacts are eligible to receive a printed tax summary, you will see a message indicating this.
Characteristics of the Contacts in this section
- They have at least one transaction on their contact record in the previous calendar year
- They do not have an email address
- Their contact profile indicates that their email address is undeliverable
- They have a mailing address
- They have no transactions in a different currency than that of which your organization is set
Actions
- View the contacts who meet the criteria above.
- Get Started (found on the first tab) - This button allows you to do the following:
- Include a cover letter
- Generate your PDF Tax Summaries and visit the Mailings page in Kindful (Communication > Mailings) to download with your envelopes or labels. These will appear in your Mailings section in Kindful.
Understanding the Donation Advantage
In order for contacts to appear on the Tax Summaries Tool, one of the required criteria in the Tax Summary calculation is that the sum of the contact’s gross transaction amounts minus the sum of their non-tax deductible amounts must be greater than 20% of the sum of their total transactions for the applicable calendar year.
To measure which contacts do/don't qualify for the donation advantage, you can use the following Contacts filters to view the people whose transactions do not qualify:
(As a note, the filter Has CRA Compliant Transaction in Year: 2020 above is inverted. If you do not know how to invert a filter, you can learn how on our article below.)
Inverting and Adding Additional Values a Filter
After Your Tax Summaries are Sent
Let's go over what to expect now that you've sent them.
Once you clicked "Email Tax Summaries" in section 2, all those Tax Summaries were sent off via email. Each person who was emailed a Tax Summary now has an activity on their profile. It will look like this:
Postal Mail
Once you clicked "Generate PDFs" in section 3, all those Tax Summaries were sent to your Mailings section in Kindful to download and print to send via postal mail.
When you're downloading those PDFs, make sure you also click the button that says "Confirm Mailer Sent" on the far right side of your Tax Summary's Mailing.
Doing so, will place an activity on all of those contact's profiles that they received their Tax Summary in letter form.
Relevant Filters for CRA Transactions
"Has CRA Compliant Transaction in Year" - This is a contact based filter that shows all contacts who have a CRA receiptable transaction in the specified tax year.
"Has Eligible Transaction(s) for CRA Receipt" - This is an activities based filter that finds all eligible transactions
Classy and CRA Tax Summaries
If you have transactions that originated from the Classy integration, be aware that receipting in Classy is automatic and cannot be turned off. Therefore, if you use the Kindful Tax Summary tool, transactions that originated in Classy will be receipted a second time. You can avoid this by manually receipting all other non-Classy transactions in Kindful throughout the year (by clicking the “Email Receipt” or “Print Receipt” button beneath each transaction), rather than utilizing the Kindful Tax Summary Tool.
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