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Find answers to common questions about Tax Receipt Generator

Why you can’t edit an issued receipt

Once a receipt has been emailed or mailed to a donor, you can no longer edit it in place. This isn’t a limitation — it’s a compliance requirement. A donor’s copy already exists outside the system, so silently changing the numbers behind it would leave two different versions of the same official document in circulation. Instead, corrections go through Correct / Replace: cancel the original, and create a replacement, numbered off the original, that carries the fix.

How cancel & replace works

The two receipts stay linked everywhere they appear:

  • The original is stamped CANCELLED on its retained PDF and marked cancelled in your records — it is never deleted.
  • The replacement carries the original’s receipt number with a -rev1 suffix appended (see Custom Receipt Numbering) and its PDF carries a required statement noting what it replaces. The statement is one line in one language: a Canadian receipt in French or bilingual prints the French line only, a Canadian English receipt prints the English line, and a US acknowledgment always prints the English line.
  • Both receipts reference each other, so anyone reviewing either one can find the other.

Doing a correction

From the receipt’s row action or its detail page, choose Correct / Replace. This opens the Correct & Replace Receipt page — a form pre-filled with the receipt’s current values, which you edit as needed. You can change:

  • the donor’s name and address
  • the donation date, within the same calendar year
  • the amount
  • the advantage amount and description, only when the run has donors who received an advantage
  • the in-kind fields, on in-kind runs

The eligible amount is not editable. It is recalculated automatically from the amount minus the advantage, and the replacement prints the recalculated figure. A reason for the correction is required before you can continue.

The flow is two steps: after you fill in your changes and click through, a confirmation panel locks the form (read-only) and summarizes what will happen — cancelling the original and creating a replacement — before anything is submitted. This prevents a correction from going through with an incomplete or forgotten reason.

The confirmation says plainly that the replacement is not sent automatically; you send it from Distribute. After you click Confirm & Create Replacement, the success message offers Send from Distribute, which opens the replacement’s run and batch on the tab it waits on. Until the replacement is sent or mailed, its receipt page shows a persistent “Not sent yet” notice with the same link.

A correction can’t move a receipt into a different tax year

If your changes would shift the receipt date across a calendar year boundary — for example, correcting a January receipt to a date the previous December — the correction is refused. This isn’t an arbitrary restriction: a receipt’s number and its tax year are tied together, and changing the year without changing the number would leave the two disagreeing on the donor’s own document.

If you need to fix a donation that actually belongs in a different tax year, Correct / Replace isn’t the right tool. Instead, cancel the original receipt and issue a brand-new one dated for the correct year — the same two-receipt trail described above, just started from a fresh receipt rather than a correction to this one.

What it costs

A correction uses 1 credit, the same as generating any receipt PDF. The cost is shown before you confirm. If you have no credits left, the correction is refused and nothing changes; buy a pack from Billing and try again. Corrections in a test run are free. The cancelled original’s credit is not returned. If the original’s PDF has already expired, it is re-rendered from your records with its CANCELLED stamp within that same 1 credit, so a later resend of the replacement can attach the cancelled original; if only that render fails, the replacement stands and the credit is not returned. Regenerating a replacement also re-renders any expired cancelled originals in its chain for the same 1 credit. If the corrected PDF cannot be produced, the credit is returned; regenerating it later uses 1 credit.

Cancelling without a replacement

Sometimes an issued receipt shouldn’t be replaced at all — it was a duplicate, went to the wrong donor, or the donation itself was reversed. For cases like these, use Cancel instead of Correct / Replace: it cancels the receipt and issues nothing in its place.

Choose Cancel — from the receipt’s row action in the batch-history list, or from the Cancel receipt button on the receipt’s own page — and give a reason; a reason is required, just as with a correction. The receipt stays visible in your records, stamped cancelled, and its number stays used; no new receipt is created and no number is issued to take its place. The receipt’s credit is not returned.

The donor already has a copy of the receipt, and cancelling it in your system can’t recall that copy. See Notifying the donor below.

A receipt that was never issued — never emailed or marked as mailed — can’t be cancelled this way. Use Void instead, which is for receipts that haven’t reached a donor yet.

Notifying the donor

When you cancel a receipt without a replacement, tell the donor so they don’t use it when they file their taxes. You can do this two ways.

By email. The Cancel confirmation offers Email the donor a cancellation notice. It is ticked when the receipt was emailed, and greyed out when the receipt has no email address. You can also send the notice later: open the cancelled receipt and choose Send cancellation notice under Notify the donor. Before you confirm, a preview shows the address, the sending account, the language, the subject and the message.

The notice uses fixed wording. It says the receipt was issued in error and has been cancelled, and asks the donor not to use it for their taxes. A copy of the receipt marked CANCELLED is attached. The notice goes:

  • to the receipt’s current email address, so a corrected address is used;
  • in the receipt’s language;
  • through your organization’s own email account, the one that sent the receipt. If you have several accounts and none sent this receipt, you’ll be asked to choose one.

If the notice bounced, or the receipt has no email address, choose Correct email address (or Add email address) under Notify the donor. Enter the new address and say what happened. Saving changes only the address, on the receipt and the donor’s record, and nothing is sent; then choose Send cancellation notice to send the notice to the new address. The change is recorded in the Audit Log.

If the run requires approval before emails go out, the notice waits for that approval like any other email. In a test run, it goes to you instead of the donor. If the receipt’s PDF has expired, it is re-created first, at no charge.

By mail. Choose Download notice letter on the cancelled receipt’s page. You get one PDF to print: a letter in the receipt’s language, addressed to the donor, followed by the copy marked CANCELLED.

Once a notice has been sent, the receipt’s page shows when and to which address. Each notice, and each printed letter, is recorded in the Audit Log. A replaced receipt doesn’t need a notice, because the replacement already tells the donor.

Finding cancelled receipts

By default, the receipts list hides cancelled originals to keep the view focused on valid receipts. A Show cancelled toggle brings them back into view alongside their replacements, with badges linking each pair so you can trace a correction’s history — useful when reconciling with a donor’s records or answering a question about why a receipt number changed.

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