Tax receipts for live/silent auction prizes - new for us

Dawn Douglas
Dawn Douglas
Facilitator 1 First Anniversary Participant
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

We are hosting an event (this week) and (in compliance with CRA) will be offering tax receipts to individuals who purchase live or silent auction items for the difference between fair market value and the auction purchase price. This is new for us.

How do we handle the data entry in RE?

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  • Jaclyn Whitelock
    Jaclyn Whitelock
    Third Anniversary Kudos 2 PowerUp Challenge: Standard Reports+ First Reply
    Answer ✓

    Aldera answered the how perfectly above. From my end as another fellow Canadian who has done this type of receipting for events, I will say that it is a complicated and annoying process. I would personally advise against receipting for auction items specifically because of this,and there being so much room for error. It creates extra work for your gift entry team/processors, and if it's not something you've done before, it's something I would carefully consider before making it the norm for your organization.

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  • Aldera Chisholm
    Aldera Chisholm Community All-Star
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 5 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge First Reply

    Hi Dawn,

    Fellow Canadian here, who has done lots of events! :)

    In general, it's best for CRA purposes to not offer charitable receipts for Auction purchases. Check out the CRA de minimus rules specific to Auctions here if you haven't, but the short version is, unless folks are purchasing for at least 125% of retail value, they aren't eligible. If you do want to go ahead with a CRA receipt, you will have to do the entry and receipting using database view.

    When entering the gift, add the transaction amount as the Gift Amount, and edit the Receipt Amount to be the charitable portion. You can also use the Benefits option to calculate for you, here is the knowledgebase on that: https://kb.blackbaud.com/knowledgebase/Article/74974. Your CRA receipt has to be done in database view as you need to have the Value of the Advantage and Description of Advantage on the receipt. If you've set it up in Benefit, you can output those fields, or, you can put the description in either the reference field or a gift note, and output that field to mail merge into your receipt.

    Hope that helps, don't hesitate to ask more questions on here, or DM me.

    Cheers

    Aldera

    CRA Receipt example here: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/charities-giving/charities/sample-official-donation-receipts.html#sample2

  • Dawn Douglas
    Dawn Douglas
    Facilitator 1 First Anniversary Participant

    Thank you so much for this info!

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