I'm looking for suggestions on how to process payments and tax receipts for elevated events when the deductible amount is not known until after the event -- after all the costs have been tallied.
If we enter the payment through a ticketing batch and put it on account, at least the money is processed, but we then have to manually enter the payment and guests on the Events screen and then, at a later date, enter the contribution in order to generate the tax receipt.
If we process the payment as a contribution when it is received, we cannot issue a tax receipt until after the event. We have a custom tab to specify the deductible amount for the receipt and could, in theory, hold off on generating the receipt for a month or so until the deductible amount is known. However, the changes of accidentally generating a receipt are considerable.
Does anyone have a solution that is not messy and labour intensive?
Thank you!
Hi Maureen,
There are IRS regs on this topic, which I cannot quote, but which you could find that would help you to revise this process. I'm pretty sure that you have to establish your best guess of the tax deductible amount prior to the sale, and then that is the amount you use for the tax receipt, regardless of whether or not it ties out to the final costs of the event. Otherwise we would all be forever in the messy and very labor intensive process you describe.
In fact, we print the tax deductible amounts on the invitations to our events, and that is pretty standard practice for the event invites in our area (Chicago). Good luck!
Erin
Good grief! Just saw you are in Canada! My apologies, not enough coffee this morning.
Ok, answer #2: I would completely separate the event receipts from your regular receipt process, and depending on how great the risk of accidentally sending an inaccurate tax receipt are, I would probably have the payment operators do a "payment receipt" of some sort - along the lines of having a "we've processed your payment, and will provide a tax receipt post-event..."
Again, sorry for the other response! Hope this one is actually helpful.