Regular donations and standing orders: one line per donor

What HMRC allows

HMRC's guidance says regular donations made by one person can be shown on one line. You can add them all together and enter just the date of the most recent donation.

This is useful for monthly standing orders and direct debits. It also helps you stay within the 1,000 line limit.

Keep to one accounting period

Only add together donations made within the same accounting period. HMRC says your accounting period ends on the date to which you prepare accounts, unless your organisation was set up by a trust deed or will, or was established outside the UK. In those cases, your accounting period runs to 5 April.

HMRC gives this example: a donor pays £10 a month, and the charity's accounting period ends on 30 June. Each line covers one accounting period and uses the latest date in it.

How it looks on the schedule

• Enter the donor's name, house name or number and postcode as normal.
• Enter the total for the period in the amount column, as a plain number such as 120.00.
• Enter the date of the most recent donation in the period, as DD/MM/YY.
• Leave the aggregated donations column blank. The template says that when you add together donations from the same donor, that column must be left blank.

Do not confuse this with aggregated donations, which add together small donations from different donors. See aggregated and sponsored donations.

Donor Schedule currently puts each donation in your file on its own line. If you want regular donations on one line, total them in your spreadsheet first, by donor and accounting period, then load that file.

Source: HMRC schedule spreadsheet guidance, "Regular donations", and the instructions in HMRC's template.