Looking for feedback on *NEW* Canadian Tax Receipt functionality

Hello my dear Canadians! My name is Meaghan and I'm a Business Analyst with Tessitura. We've spoken to some of you before regarding the new Canadian Tax Receipt functionality that we want to develop, but I'm looking for additional feedback and this seemed like a good place to cast a wide net. For those of you who haven't participated in any of the previous discussions about this topic, let me provide some background.

After the v16 general release, we are planning to develop some new functionality that will better enable all of you to meet Canadian Tax Law requirements surrounding tax receipts. We've spent quite a bit of time working with a Canadian Tax authority to ensure we understand all the legal requirements, and we have spoken with some of you to gain an understanding of what you're doing today to generate tax receipts. At a high level, we are hoping to:

  • Develop a new tax receipt numbering process that results in unique, sequential tax receipt numbers, which are then stored in a secure, auditable table
    • We will be sure that this new process supports consortiums and organizations that operate two or more legal entities so that tax receipt numbers are unique and sequential within each entity
  • Change how tax receipt numbers are linked to gifts/pledges so that we only generate receipts for received payments, not un-paid pledges
  • Enable more robust functionality surrounding voids and adjustments so that:
    • A void reason can be captured and linked to an existing tax receipt number
    • Replacement tax receipts can be linked to voided receipts
    • Replacement tax receipts will clearly indicate the voided receipt number(s) that are being replaced
  • Support the ability to generate real-time emailed tax receipts as secure PDF attachments to an email, regardless of how the gift is processed (contribution entry, order entry, pledge billing, contribution import, etc.)
  • Support scheduled email and hard copy tax receipt generation (likely via a utility)
  • Develop new functionality to more easily reprint/resend email and hard copy tax receipts

I will share more concrete details and examples as they become available, but in the meantime, I need your help answering a few questions! 

Setting aside how acknowledgements and tax receipts currently behave, and venturing with me into an ideal land where all things work just as we want them to, please take a look at the following questions and let me know what you think.

  1. For emailed tax receipts, the legal requirement is to send an email, and have the the tax receipt attached as a secure PDF. With that in mind, is a single email format with configurable HTML enough, or do you need the ability to choose from a list of different configurable email formats based on some set of criteria (e.g. fund, campaign, constituencies, gift amount, recipient, etc.)?
  2. Same question for the PDF attachment - is a single configurable tax receipt PDF format enough, or do you need the ability to choose from a list of different configurable tax receipt formats based on some set of criteria?
  3. For questions #1 and 2 above, if you need to be able to select from a list of formats based on a set of criteria, does the current Acknowledgement Rules functionality give you what you need to ensure the right format is selected? If not, what's missing?
  4. What reporting or list/output needs do you anticipate needing to go along with this new functionality? For example, is there a need for a tax receipt audit report that is generated and included with your organization's tax filing, or maybe something that could be generated and provided to auditors as part of their review? 

Thank you in advance for your time and feedback! I know I'll have more questions as we continue to define this new functionality, but please feel free to ping me with any thoughts or questions you have in the meantime.

Much appreciated,

Meaghan