The charity is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the 5.4 million people in the UK whose lives are affected by the condition it represents.
The charity is the largest independent funder of research in the sector in the UK. It funds approximately £3 million of research annually and works directly with sufferers, schools, healthcare professionals and parents to share expertise to reduce the impact of respiratory conditions on people’s lives.
Charity’s paper records weren’t helping audits or customer service
Like many organisations the charity had historically relied on a loosely structured paper filing systems for its records management. This dispersed and fragmented system did not provide the efficient retrieval of documents that the charity was obligated to provide HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) during auditing of its Gift Aid claims. With the paper filing system, the Charity was unable to provide a complete audit trail for each of its Gift Aid claims because it was almost impossible to link an individual claim to all the relevant paper records.
Choosing Document Manager
The charity entered a formal process to procure a document management software system that would address the challenge of providing accurate audit trails required to secure its Gift Aid tax claims. The charity decided on the Document Manager™ system because of its flexibility, strong functionality and the system’s integration into the charity’s Raiser’s Edge database. The software would enable all incoming Gift Aid documentation to be scanned efficiently, indexed and linked to other business applications. The charity was also impressed with the responsiveness and high levels of expertise demonstrated by the product support team.
Benefits of Document Manager
- Elimination of unstructured paper records
- Improvement of Gift Aid audit trails
- Massive savings in document retrieval times
- Elimination of paper, freeing up valuable office space
- Easy integration with current charity management systems
- Users find the software very simple to use
The Document Manager Solution
The Document Manager system provides charity staff with a fully secure and instantly searchable audit trail of every document related to each Gift Aid claim. The solution is fully integrated to the charity’s existing database systems, which saves staff a significant amount of time by providing the ability to reconcile the scanned Gift Aid claim images all the way back to the donor’s name within the charity database, Raiser’s Edge.
Where in the past it would possibly take a staff member an entire day to manually locate the information required to justify a Gift Aid claim from thousands of records stored in archive boxes, this retrieval process works in seconds. Manually sorting through paper records has been entirely eliminated.
Staff are now able to locate all the documents needed quickly to verify the validity of claims and the charity is now able to make its Gift Aid claims confidently knowing it has a fully secure and reliable system with no likelihood of reclaims from HMRC.
As part of the installation project, Document Logistix arranged the secure collection and delivery of documents from the charity’s head office for scanning in the Document Logistix in-house scanning bureau. In order to meet their tight deadline and to satisfy the Customs and Excise audit, the bureau scanned approximately 175,000 Gift Aid Forms within six weeks, thereby enabling the charity to make claims for gift aid tax reimbursement for that year.
The charity was ‘very satisfied’ with the efficiency of the installation project and are impressed with the ongoing performance and stability of their solution.
“The Document Manager system provides our staff with a fully secure and instantly searchable audit trail of every document related to each Gift Aid claim – potentially saving the charity hundreds of thousands of pounds per annum”, the I.T. Director of Operations said.