Donor statements provide donors with a list of all their successful donations over a given time period. You can provide annual donor statements to assist their donors with filing their taxes and report their deductible donations or send them out at any time via email or mail delivery.
Important
This article covers US donor statements. See the Canadian Tax Receipts article for information on Canadian statements.
Notice
All donors who had at least one successful donation during the statement date range will receive a statement, including inactive donors.
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Administrators can generate donor statements for a group of people or for an individual. If any of your donors prefer to receive a single, combined statement with another donor in their household, you can choose to issue Joint Statements.
Tip
Did you know sending digital statements is acceptable to the IRS? You can save paper and email them!
The example below shows what you can expect to see on a US donor statement.
Notice
If you have chosen to include pledge information, that information will also be shown on the statements.
US Donor Statements show the date and amount of the gift as well as the way it was given and to which fund. They also show the total, which you can break down into subtotals based on funds if you'd like.
Notice
Admin notes recorded on a donation will not show up on the statements. Notes are only viewable to Giving Admins.
You can optionally set these things up before generating statements:
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If you want Payment Sources to show on statements that you generate, enable this within the Payment Source.
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To create joint statements that combine the donation history of two donors, set up joint statements.
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Keep records clean by encouraging people to give online, where you'll get their email address, or by adding an address and email address field on the donation envelope.
You can generate statements for all people that donated within a specified date range, then email the statements to donors or print them out.
On the Manage page, go to the Statements tab to start generating donor statements.
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The deliverability report shows where potential problems are and gives a direct way of fixing them. If someone is missing an email address, mailing address, or both, you can add the missing contact information before generating statements.
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Click Create a new statement and follow the prompts on the screen to send your donors a statement.
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Name your statement in a way that communicates the date range that it reports, as it is visible to both you and your donors.
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The date range you select will include all donors who have successful donations received in the statement's date range. Although all donations are visible in a donor's history, failed, refunded, and ones that are in progress aren't included in the statement.
Click Save to preview your statement.
Tip
If you find a donation is missing from a statement, check the donation's received date against the date range you selected. The received date is not editable for any online giving, but it is dependent upon batches for cash and checks. Donations entered into In Progress batches will not be listed on the statement; those batches must be committed.
Based on the missing information, decide if you want to deliver the statement by email, mail, or a smart mix of both.
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Giving will warn you if there are any donations excluded from the statement, such as donations that were refunded, failed, haven't been committed, or are in transit. When the warning is present, make sure your batches are committed or wait a few days for transactions to settle before sending donor statements.
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If contact information for donors is missing, you can add it before generating the statements.
Scroll down to make sure the information is correct.
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If this address is incorrect, you can change it for this group of statements. To change it permanently, the Organization Administrator can change it on the Accounts page.
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Choose to use the default donor information shown here, or add other information in the address section of the statement.
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Decide what the table of donations should show. You can include all individual donations, an optional additional section for fund subtotals, or forgo the individual donation listings and only list fund subtotals.
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Check if you want to include the status of campaign pledges during this time period.
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To change the name or date range of the statement, click Edit statement at the top of the page.
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Change the tax disclaimer in the Settings, if needed. If the church information below the disclaimer is incorrect, an Organization Administrator can change it from the Accounts page.
You can avoid printing out statements unnecessarily by following this process:
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Send email statements.
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See how many of them get downloaded from the Deliverability Status a week or two later.
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Print statements, excluding donors who have already downloaded their statements.
Choose to either send email or print statements.
Tip
If you'd like to send both email and printed statements, start with email statements, and you will be prompted to send printed statements at the end.
Customize the email to fit your church's culture and language.
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View or download a CSV file of the donors selected to receive statements.
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We use the statement label to form your Subject, but you can change it to something different.
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Preview the way the statement will look when you send it.
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View the different types of variables you can add to your statement Subject and Body.
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Enter any necessary information you'd like to communicate to each donor.
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Send a test email to yourself to see if the email is formatted the way you want.
Once you've edited the statement message to your liking, click Send to donors. You'll receive a message confirming you want to send the email.
Notice
The download link that the donors receive is a secure login link to online giving which takes them to their donor profile. If they've never actually logged in, they can make sure their information is current and learn what the donor interface is like.
The download link will no longer act as a login link after two weeks. The donor can use the link but only if they're logged in.
After you've sent the email, you'll be taken to the statement page where you can view how many people accessed their statement.
Caution
Once a statement has been emailed, the label, date range, and the statement itself cannot be edited or deleted.
There isn't a way to resend emailed statements, but donors always have access to their most up-to-date statement from their donor profile.
To generate printed printed statements, click Print, then then configure the statements.
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If you've already sent email statements, you can choose to then send printed statements to people who already received an email.
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Check to enable double-sided statements.
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Add a page break to the end of the cover letter page, starting the statement information on the next page.
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Choose where to put the address and logo on the statement, or choose to remove these from the page.
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View what the PDF will actually look like when it prints.
Tip
Cover Letter Opt-Out: If you don't need a cover letter for statements, you can remove it by:
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Setting the Address option dropdown to "Don't show addresses"
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Setting the Logo display dropdown to "(none)"
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Removing paragraph content from the body of your cover letter (make sure to leave the "{{ statement_content }}" placeholder intact to retain the statement information)
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Click the i to drop down the different types of variables you can add to your statement.
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Enter any necessary information you'd like to communicate to each donor.
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Download a test statement to see if the email is formatted the way you want.
Tip
Download a test statement to see how it works with your #10 double windowed envelopes. Experiment with where you fold the statements, to ensure they don't slide around in the envelope and make the addresses unreadable in the envelope window.
Once you've set the statement the way you want it, click Generate statements. You'll receive a message confirming you want to generate the statements.
As you generate statements, you'll see them and their statuses from the Statements tab. It might take a few minutes for the file to reach your email or be available to download.
The file will have two folders: one with statements for donors who have mailing addresses and one with statements for donors who don't.
After printing statements, you can head over to People to create mailing labels for the donors that you plan to mail statements to.
Caution
Once a statement has been generated, the label, date range, and the statement itself cannot be edited, and the statement will be available to donors online. Statements can be deleted at any time until they’re sent out by email.
The donor address and return address of your organization can be positioned to show in a standard #10 double-window envelope.
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Although donor statements are available online, you may need to generate a correction or a re-delivery of a lost physical statement.
Go to the donor's profile, set the date range, and then click Statement PDF.
Choose what you want to include on the statement.
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Choose formatting options.
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Choose which items you want to show on the statement.
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Check if you want to include the status of campaign pledges during this time period.
Click Download to generate the statement.
If you need to update recipients, formatting, or the cover letter for printed statements that you've already generated, select the statement from the Statements list.
Notice
Receipt numbers for regenerated statements will remain the same as the original statements.
Click Edit & Regenerate, and confirm that you want to delete the original PDFs.
Make any needed changes. For example, you can include donors that have already been mailed a statement.
When you are finished with your changes, click Generate.