DGR Receipting Done Right: What the ATO Actually Requires

A deductible gift receipt is not a piece of letterhead with "Thank You" on it. It is a legal instrument that allows your donor to claim a tax deduction — and one missing field is enough to make it invalid in the eyes of the ATO.

The five mandatory elements

The ATO requires every receipt to clearly state:

1. The name of the fund, authority or institution to which the gift was made.
2. The DGR's Australian Business Number (ABN).
3. The fact that the receipt is for a gift.
4. The date of the gift.
5. The amount of money, or a description of property gifted.

Miss any of these and the receipt is technically invalid. Donors who claim against an invalid receipt face amended assessments — and the audit trail leads back to you.

The traps charities fall into

• Receipting non-deductible amounts. Raffle tickets, dinner tickets, auction items above market value — none are deductible. A line on the receipt that says "this includes $50 for the dinner" is enough to invalidate the gift portion in some readings.
• Receipting on behalf of a non-DGR entity. If your charity has multiple ABNs (e.g. a PBI fund + an operational entity), the receipt must come from the DGR-endorsed fund.
• Backdating. The date on the receipt must be the date of the gift, not the date of issue.
• Bundled receipting at year end. Acceptable, but each gift must still be itemised and dated correctly.

The four-eyes principle

Receipting errors are usually data errors. The cheapest mitigation is a four-eyes check on any receipt above a threshold (commonly $1,000), with an audit log of who reviewed, who issued, and when.

Workflow that prevents the mistake

A well-designed receipting workflow:

1. Validates the gift type before the receipt is generated (cash, property, shares all have different requirements).
2. Pulls the donor's legal name from the canonical donor record, not from the gift form.
3. Auto-numbers receipts sequentially with no gaps.
4. Stores a PDF copy against the donor record AND the gift record.
5. Sends the receipt by email AND logs the send for the audit trail.

Aid Synergy's donor management module is built around this flow. The donor never sees the plumbing — they just get a clean, ATO-compliant receipt within minutes of giving.

Annual reconciliation

At year end, your receipted-revenue total should reconcile to:

• Your AIS gift income line.
• Your finance system's restricted/unrestricted fund split.
• Your bank reconciliation.

If those three numbers don't agree, you have a problem an auditor will find before you do.

Further reading

• ATO: Requirements for a tax deductible gift
• ACNC: Reporting gifts in your AIS