8 Tips for Creating Great End of Year Tax Statements in Breeze

For everyone involved with receiving donations at a church the new year means it's time to send out end of year contribution statements.  We thought a quick post sharing how to create these statements (for new churches) and offering a refresher (for veteran churches) would be useful.

Note: If you haven't already, we highly recommend reading How to Make an Awesome (or Terrible) End of Year Donation Receipt before continuing.  This article explains how statements aren't just a legal document but can be a strategic move in helping people engage with your church and embrace the vision of living for something bigger than themselves.

Creating the Statement

Creating a contribution statement within Breeze is easy!  Here's a quick video showing how to generate a statement for everyone in your church:

 
Interested in generating a statement for an individual, a family, or a specific group of people?  Take a look at our documentation on contribution statements.

Customizing the Statement

Breeze allows users to customize statements so that they can appear just how they want them.  Here's a quick video showing how you can customize the appearance of your statement:

 
While customizing the statement in general is quite straight forward, there's a few tips and tricks that churches may sometimes be interested in that we've included here.

8 Tips for Great Statements

Tip 1: Start with a Statement Template

Want to build off a template we've already built?  You can use one of our templates by navigating to the statements editor and clicking "Templates" in the toolbar.  More information on contribution statement templates can be found in our documentation.

Tip 2: List payments that were not tax-deductible

 
Breeze allows users to designate certain funds as not tax-deductible.  Contributions given to these funds will not show up on statements by default, but some churches may want to have these non-tax deductible payments show up in a separate area on the statement so donors can see all of their payments and understand the breakdown of what was tax deductible and what was not.  To include non tax-deductible information, just use the corresponding items under the "Mail Merge" toolbar option (click here for more information in our documentation).

Tip 3: Windowed Envelopes

 
Windowed envelopes can be a great way to save time by having the recipient's address simply printed on the statement page and having it show up through the envelope window so that a separate address label is not needed.  The challenge is that the address then needs to line up with the window.  Simple tabbing or spacing within the statements editor typically doesn't achieve the goal as the second address line doesn't honor the indentation.  What we recommend is using tables.  To do so:

 
• In the statement editor, hover over the table icon in the toolbar and create a table 2 wide x 1 high
 
• Using your mouse, grab and stretch the table out to span the width of the statement
 
• Add the name and address mail merge options in the right table cell
 
• Put the cursor in the left cell and navigate to "Table > Cell > Cell Properties".  Give it a width (you could start with 150) and click "Ok".  This will adjust how wide a space you have to the left of your address.  Tweak this number until it matches your envelope windows.

Tip 4: Generate Mailing Labels that Match your Statements

 
You can quickly print out mailing labels that correspond to the labels you've printed out by:

 
• Navigating to "More > Contributions > Statements"
 
• Click "Print"
 
• Click the dropdown arrow to the right of "Print Statements" and select "Print Mailing Labels"

Tip 5: Only print statements for people without email addresses

 
If you'd like to only print end of year statements for people who do not have email addresses, you can do exactly this. This is ideal if you'd like to email people their statements but still want to send physical statements by mail to those you're unable to email.  To do so:

 
• Navigate to "More > Contributions > Statements"
 
• Click "Print"
 
• On the "Print For" dropdown select the option "Donors without Email Addresses"
 
• Click "Print Statements"

Tip 6: Changing the Margins

We recommend adjusting the statement margins by using the built-in browser controls. While different browsers have different interfaces for how to adjust the margins, my personal favorite is Chrome. The video above shows how to quickly adjust the margins in Chrome and instantly see how it will affect the formatting of your statement.

Tip 7: Removing Headers & Footers

 
When printing from a browser, often times you'll encounter text on the very top and bottom of the page that the browser puts there - usually a web address and sometimes a date or a page number.  Needless to say this is a bit unprofessional.  The good news is that it's easy to remove.  This is a browser setting so you'll just need to tweak the setting in your browser before printing.  We recommend using Chrome and the video above shows how to quickly remove the header and footer content when printing in Chrome.

Tip 8: An itemized list of contributions with only the columns you desire appearing

 
Let's say you want an itemized list of contributions but you only want the date, check number, and amount appearing for each gift without any other columns (such as fund, donor, etc).  You can include exactly the columns you want by tweaking the itemized list code.  Check out the "itemized list" row in this table within our documentation for more information.

Looking for more information on customizing contribution statements?  Feel free to check out our documentation on statement customization.

Have any tips or tricks that you found helpful that we might have missed?  We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.