Although OPAS and Gift Aid is fully integrated with one another you still need to complete some basic checking in order to ensure donations are being claimed in full and correctly.

There are various reasons why donations may be classed as "pending" or not appearing at all.

1. The "Gift Aid" flag within OPAS was not ticked.
2. The original cash entry for the donation has not been reconciled.
3. The parishioner is "unapproved" or the claim/signed date is before the donation date.
4. A standing order, one-off or envelope has not been allocated or (specifically for envelopes) only been part allocated.
5. The donation has been allocated to the wrong parishioner
6. If you have had donations imported from another supplier some of these are showing as "unreconciled" or "unapproved".

It is therefore advisable that you complete these housekeeping checks regularly in order to keep the data accurate and up to date but also to reduce the level of checking when a claim needs to be processed at the year end.

Below is a brief guide to some of the areas within Gift Aid that can help you with checking donations.

Do you have any donations "Pending"?

If you have any donation that has a "Pending" status then it will not be claimed.  You can check this quickly by:

1. Navigating to the Donations tab.
2. Click on "Pending Donations" under the filter section at the top.

This will result in donations that are pending to be displayed only.  The columns, "Reconciled" (OPAS bank reconciled) and "Approved" (Parishioner approval) status may help to determine why the donation is not approved.

Alternatively, you can display the same information on a per parishioner basis:

1. Search and "load up" the parishioner record.
2. Scroll down to the donations section near the bottom of the record and click on "Click to View"
3. Under the filter section select "pending" only and click on "update"

This will display the same information as above but on a per parishioner basis.

The "Reconciled" flag is not ticked?

Quite simply, if this flag is not ticked then the donation has not been reconciled with the bank within OPAS and until it has been, it will not be available for claim.

To rectify this, the cash entry within OPAS must be reconciled as there is no way to bypass the restriction.

The "Approved" flag is not ticked?

This flag can warn of various issues surrounding the donation, but in particular will relate to the parishioner record or GAD details.

1. There is not a GAD set up for the parishioner (all donations must be allocated against a GAD)
2. The GAD has not been approved by admin (all newly created GAD's have to be approved first (usually by admin) - this has not been done)
3. The "signed" date of "claim start" date is after the donation date (if the donation is before the GAD is due to start then you will be unable to claim donations.  However, if this is a inputting mistake, re-check all dates.)
4. The GAD has expired (if the GAD has expired then you will not be able to claim the donation)
5. The parishioner is a planned giver (currently any parishioner that are planned givers will show donations as pending)
6. A donation has been allocated against a terminated parishioner (for example, a standing order may well be still active and allocated to a parishioner even if they're status has been changed to "Terminated", you may need to check the termination date and / or whether these donations need deleting.)

Check to ensure all receipts from OPAS have been fully allocated and/or approved

With the exception of SO's, all receipts filtered from OPAS must be allocated against a GAD manually as and when they come in.  Standing order only need to be allocated once on SO creation.  If a receipt is not allocated against a valid GAD then the donation will not be claimed due to not having a link to an approved parishioner.

You will need to check the following areas:

Standing Orders:

1. When a standing order is created within OPAS, the gift aid flag must be ticked to ensure the record is filtered through into the module and any new ones will appear under "unallocated"
2. The newly formed standing order has to be allocated to a parishioner.
3. Check to ensure all standing order have been allocated against a parishioner and GAD
4. The same "approval" checks will commence to ensure that parishioner has a valid GAD.

Envelope Allocation:

1. Check to ensure all envelope receipts have been allocated and approved (there are filters to show unallocated, saved and allocated)
2. Check to ensure there are no envelope receipts under "saved"
3. If there are envelopes unallocated then this could be due to a part allocation or a full allocation needed.
4. You may wish to check that there are no envelope amounts missing by using the date's as a check.  If there are missing weeks then it could be a result of OPAS not being ticked for Gift Aid on that particular week.

One-Off Allocation:

1. Whenever a parishioner has given a "one-off" donation and this has been flagged as "one-off" within OPAS it will be filtered into the "one-off" tab.
2. These donations still need to be allocated to the correct parishioner.  Click on "Pending Donations" to filter accordingly.
3. Again, the same "approval" check will then commence to ensure that the parishioner has a valid one-off GAD.

 I have allocated a donation to the wrong parishioner and GAD

If you have incorrectly allocated a donation to the wrong parishioner then you will need to either delete the allocated donation or re-allocate again.

1. Standing Order (edit the standing order and select the correct parishioner from the list and click on update.  This will update all standing orders already allocated to the current parishioner and re-allocate to the correct parishioner)
2. Envelope (you will need to delete the allocated envelope from that parishioner by navigating to the parishioner record or the envelope amount in the envelope tab.  Delete the donation and re-allocate to the correct parishioner)
3. One-Off (you need to navigate to the "one off" tab and click on the blue cross relating to the incorrectly allocated donation - choose the correct parishioner and click on update.

These are some of the basic checks that you can complete in order to ensure your data is accurate and up to date.  It is good practise to complete these checks frequently on the Gift Aid module but also ensure OPAS is checked to ensure Gift Aided donations are flagged correctly in the first instance.  Due to how the system is designed it is impossible for an "over claim" of donations to be processed at an admin level.  However, the system will not prevent incorrectly allocated claims from being clamed (e.g. allocated to the wrong parishioner).