Church of England - Parish Giving Scheme (PSG)

The following comments are only relevant for those churches that have subscribed to the Parish Giving Scheme. They are related to the position as it stands at October 2023.

PGS is a Charity

PGS is a charity that claims Gift Aid on the donations accepted on the churches behalf. Current legislation, although they are lobbying for a change, means that donations received through PGS CANNOT be considered in calculating the GASDS threshold for the church. Indeed it should be regarded simply as income. It is worth noting that had the donations been received directly then those that are Gift Aid-able are considered in the calculation of the GASDS threshold.

What does this mean?

The value of GASDS donations in any tax year is capped at the lower of £8,000 or 10 times the value of donations on which Gift Aid has been successfully claimed by the church in the tax year. AS only those donations claimed by the church are included in the GASDS threshold so it may mean that the amount of small cash collections that can be claimed is restricted or even not available.

Accounting for Income from the PGS

Two approaches are suggested depending on user preference:-

To record as a donation document type

To ensure that the receipts through PGS are NOT included in the GASDS allowance calculation the donor record could simply be PGS and identified as a Non-Gift Aid donor. When the receipt is recorded it would be against the donor record and applied to the appropriate income account(s). The benefit here is that you can run your

Donations - Reports - Donations by Donor Report

and clearly see those donations received through PGS.

To record the receipt as a receipt document type

The other option would be to treat the receipt using the Receipt document type. For this you could set up PGS as a customer and again apply the receipt to the appropriate income account(s). To see the value of donations received through PGS you would run

Reports - Income/Expense - Income by Customer

Above we're suggesting two possibilities where there is no analysis to individual donors. This would mean that your Liberty Accounts Annual Donation Certificate would only include donations you have received directly. Those who donate through PGS can get a certificate for their donations made through them.

What if you want to record individual donations through the PGS against the donors' record on Liberty Accounts?

As the donations can NOT be consider in the calculation of the GASDS threshold those individual donations from Gift Aid donor should to be flagged as a 'Gift Aid Not Claimable' on the transaction.