CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi all,

I've been tasked with finding s/w for tracking donations for a relatively new Canadian Charity. We receive donations primarily via cheque, cash, and EFT (through CanadaHelps). All contributions will be entered offline by a volunteer. I have a couple of questions initially as I try to determine if civi will work for us:
1. Official Canadian Tax Receipts. We issue tax receipts once per year. As donations are received they are acknowledged by email etc., but the official receipt is sent later. Can this be done from CiviCRM? I assume that I can create a template for this that includes all the required CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) details (i.e. unique serial number). Can a batch printing of unprinted receipts be done - pdf would be great. (see also #2 below)

2. CanadaHelps is an organization that provides an online presence for Canadian Charities. They handle all the payment processing and disburse funds to the registered charity. There is a fee for this of course - 3%. How would this kind of a donation be best recorded? i.e. a donor give $100 via CanadaHelps, they take 3% and we get the rest. I assume that we would not enter $100 as the donation amount, but it might be helpful to be able to record this somewhere so that we know what the donor actually gave. Make sense? Also for donations through CH we don't issue tax receipts. I guess this is a soft credit (sorry I'm new to the non-profit terminology).

Thanks in advance.