In this guide 7 sections
Before leaving receipt books and sheets, agree your fund heads, your receipt series, the donor fields you will collect and who checks the migrated data. Then move live donors, open grants and this year’s receipts first. GullySystem’s NGO and Trust Management Software is set up in that order, with tax wording left to your auditor.
Agree the fund heads before anything else
Every donation and every expense needs a fund head. Write down the heads the trust uses today: corpus, restricted grants, general donations and, where received, foreign contributions.
Give each live grant or CSR sanction its own line under the right head. If two people describe the same fund differently, settle the name now. A migration copies confusion as faithfully as data.
Ask your auditor to read the list before it is final.
- Corpus
- Restricted grants, one per funder
- General donations
- Foreign contributions, where received
- In-kind donations
Fix the receipt series and its wording
Decide which receipt series continues, and from which number. If several series run today, say one per centre, keep them apart in the set-up.
The wording printed on a receipt, including any 80G text, is for the trust and its auditor to settle. Settle it before go-live. Reprinting a hundred receipts is slow work.
Collect the donor details your filings need
The Income Tax Department’s user manual describes Form 10BD as a statement of donations from institutions approved under section 80G. Its donor tab asks for name, address, an ID code, donation type and mode of receipt.
Those details are often missing from bank narrations. Use the move as the moment to collect them on each donor record.
Which donations must be reported, and how, is for your accountant or adviser to confirm.
- Donor name and full address
- PAN or other ID the donor gives
- Donation type and fund head
- Mode of receipt: cash, UPI, cheque or bank
- Consent to receive messages
Decide what moves and what stays in the archive
Not every old receipt book needs retyping. Move live donors with recent giving history, open grants with budgets and balances, and the current year’s receipts.
Scan and file older books. Load beneficiary registers only for active programmes, then let programme staff check a sample of names. Duplicates across centres tend to show up here.
Pick a cut-off date. Receipts before it stay in the book.
Name who checks, who enters and who signs off
Field coordinators enter beneficiaries and activity where they have a phone and signal. The office enters donations and raises receipts. The programme head checks grant spend against budget lines.
Before go-live, the accountant compares opening balances by fund head with the books. Trustees should read one sample donor statement and one sample funder report. Fix anything that reads wrong first.
Off-paper readiness checklist
A two-column sheet listing fund heads, receipt series, donor fields, live grants, beneficiary registers and the cut-off date. Tick each item when it is agreed, and write who signed it off. Any line without a name is not ready.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Does moving to software make a trust FCRA compliant?
No. Compliance stays with the trust and its auditor. Software can keep foreign contribution receipts and spending under their own fund head, which makes the records easier to produce.
Will Form 10BD and Form 10BE come out of the software?
No. Neither form is generated there. Donations, donor records and fund heads sit in one list your accountant can read, and what the trust files is settled with your auditor.
Should we wait for the financial year to end?
It helps. A cut-off at the start of a year keeps that year’s receipts in one place. A month-start cut-off with a clean receipt number also works.
Does a small trust need software at all?
Not always. A trust that takes a few donations a year and keeps one receipt book can manage without it.
Sources
- Income Tax Department: Form 10BD-BE user manual — verified 6 Oct 2026