As a church, we have to be careful about receiving and documenting donations per the CRA's rules for issuing tax receipts.

In December, while I was away for a few weeks, a board member who knew we needed the carpets cleaned, put a cheque in the plate designated for the cleaning.  This was against policy as we have a policy to only accept designated donations for items/funds that we have made an official announcement about.  The discussion about the carpet cleaning had only happened at the board level.

On that particular Sunday and the following day, the cheque was improperly received and deposited.  When I returned in January, I explained, again, our designated gifts policy and that if he wanted a tax receipt for his donation, there was a different procedure that is typically followed.  In this case, the procedure is for the donor to pay for the service, submit the receipt to the church for reimbursement and then return the money back to the church as a general donation.

I wrote him a cheque for the donated amount and from there he followed the above procedure.  So, here I am a few months later and I'm bothered about how this should be properly processed in Sage.  When the donation came in, it went into an account line called "Unreceipted donations - restricted" (because I knew I wasn't going to issue a receipt in 2014 for it).  When I wrote the cheque returning the money, I wrote it against the same account.  However, when he ultimately returned the money, which was less than the original amount because it was the exact amount of the service, the money was credited to "Receipted donations - general."  This means I now have -$1300 showing in the unreceipted donations account for 2015.

Is there a better way to have done this?  As a charity we have to submit a T3010 to the CRA each year accounting for every dollar in and out during the fiscal year and I'm afraid this is going to throw the numbers off for next year's form.