How to Set up Tax Receipts on Trellis

This article explains how to set up automatic tax receipts on Trellis to be sent as donors make purchases.

Automating tax receipts saves your team time and ensures your donors receive exactly what they need. This guide will walk you through how to easily set up automated tax receipts in your Trellis account.

Overview of Tax Receipt Setup

There are three steps to enabling tax receipts on a fundraiser:

1. Complete all required information in your Organization Profile

2. Create a Tax Receipt Template

3. Enable Tax Receipts on each specific fundraiser

Step 1: Complete Your Organization Profile

• From your Dashboard > Profile, make sure the following fields are fully filled out:

  • Organization Name

  • Legal Organization Name

  • Organization Number

  • Minimum Tax Receiptable Amount

  • Short Organization Description

  • Organization Address

  • Organization Email

  • Organization Phone Number

  • Organization Website

Step 2: Create a Tax Receipt Template

• From the Dashboard menu, go to Tax Receipting > Tax Receipt Templates

• Click Add New Template in the top-right corner

• Fill out the following fields:

• • Tax Receipt Template Name: A descriptive name for the template. The template name is not donor-facing, it's for internal use only.
  • Tax Receipt Prefix: A prefix for receipt numbering (e.g., "TR", "[Fundraiser]", or “2024”). This is donor-facing and will appear on the PDF file name.
  • Tax Receipt Body Text: Customizable text acknowledging the donation and meeting compliance standards. This appears above the required tax receipt details. Our system has a default message that is generated, that orgs can edit.
  • Signer Information: Name, Job Title, and Digital Signature

• Click Publish to save and activate your template

Additional Features:

• Test the Template: Send a test tax receipt to your account email to verify its appearance and content.
• Duplicate Templates: Create variations for different events

• Archive Templates: Retains the template for history but removes it from fundraisers

  • Unarchiving moves it to draft status—it will not auto-connect to past fundraisers

• Delete Templates: Permanently removes the template and disconnects it from all events

  • Only recommended for unused duplicates or test versions

Step 3: Enable Tax Receipts on a Fundraiser

Once your template is ready, link it to your fundraiser:

• In the Fundraiser Builder, go to Admin > Tax Receipts
• Toggle on Enable Tax Receipts and select your template
• Toggle on Include Fees Paid by Donors to issue tax receipts for donor-covered fees.
• • • If enabled, the fees covered by donors will be included in the tax receipted amount. If the only amount eligible on the purchase are the covered fees, then the covered fees must meet the minimum amount set under organization profile. 
      • Example: If a $5.50 fee is the only receiptable portion and your threshold is $25, the donor won’t receive a receipt
• Enable Send Tax Receipts Automatically at Purchase for receipts to be generated and sent automatically after each checkout.
  • Disable it to manually review purchases and issue receipts after the fundraiser.

Example Canadian Tax Receipt

Example US Tax Receipt