Tax Documents in WeGive — Complete Help Guide

This guide walks you through everything you need to set up, customize, and distribute tax documents to your donors in the WeGive Dashboard (v2). It covers portal download settings, US custom templates, Canadian tax receipting, and bulk year-end statements.

Tax documents in WeGive come in two flavors depending on your organization's location:

• US organizations generate year-end giving statements that summarize a donor's total giving for the year. These can be fully customized with your own template.

• Canadian organizations generate official CRA-compliant tax receipts. These follow a fixed government-mandated format and cannot be customized.

Your organization's region is determined by a single master setting — Enable Canadian Tax Receipting — described in the Canadian section below. Turning it on switches your entire tax document system from the US format to the Canadian CRA format.

1. Portal Download Settings

These settings control whether and how donors can access their tax documents from inside the donor portal. You'll find them under Portal Settings → Advanced Settings → Tax Documents.

Tax Document Downloads

This is the master on/off switch for donor self-service downloads.

• No, do not generate tax documents — Donors will not see or be able to download any tax documents from their profile.

• Yes, generate tax documents on all profiles — Tax documents are generated for every donor profile and donors can download them from their profile.

When you choose "Yes," you'll also set an "Up to and including" year. This is a cutoff that limits how far back documents are available in the portal. For example, setting it to 2026 means donors can download documents for 2026 and earlier years that you've enabled, but not future years.

Tax Receipt Visibility

These two checkboxes control which types of documents donors can see in their portal:

• Show individual tax receipts — Lets donors see tax documents tied to their individual giving record.

• Show household tax receipts — Lets donors see a combined household tax document. This only appears for donors if your organization also has household/group management enabled. If group management is off, the household option has no effect even when checked.

Showing "Tax Statements & History" in the portal navigation

Enabling downloads is only half the equation — donors also need a way to find the tax documents section. That's controlled separately under Portal Settings → Navigation.

Find the Tax Statements & History item and choose where it appears:

• Include in menu — Adds it to the donor's dropdown menu.

• Include in header — Adds it to the portal header navigation.

You can enable either, both, or neither. They work independently. For donors to reach their tax documents, downloads must be turned on and this navigation item must be visible in at least one location. Remember to click Save Changes after adjusting navigation.

2. US Custom Tax Document Templates

Availability: Custom templates are available to US organizations only. If Canadian Tax Receipting is enabled, this feature is automatically disabled and your receipts will use the fixed CRA-compliant format instead. There is no way to customize the Canadian receipt layout — this is a compliance requirement.

US organizations can fully brand and customize the layout of their year-end tax documents. You'll find this under Portal Settings → Advanced Settings → Tax Documents → Custom Tax Documents.

Turning it on

Check Build a custom template for generated tax documents. This reveals the Open visual editor button.

Building your template

Clicking Open visual editor launches an HTML/CSS visual builder (a drag-and-drop editor). You design your document visually, and the editor compiles it into the final output used to generate donor PDFs. Once a template is created, its editor type is locked to that template.

Merge variables

Your template supports merge fields that automatically pull in the right data for each donor when the document is generated. These fall into three groups:

• Supporter / donor info — name, address, and contact details.

• Tax data — giving totals, the tax year, and transaction tables. Two of the most common are {{donation_table_for_year}} (a table of the donor's gifts for the year) and {{service_revenue_table_for_year}}.

• Organization info — your organization's name, EIN, and address.

When a donor downloads their document, WeGive replaces these variables with that donor's actual data and renders the final PDF.

How generation decides which template to use

When a US donor downloads a tax document, WeGive checks two things: whether custom templates are turned on, and whether a compiled template actually exists. If both are true, your custom template is used. If either is missing, WeGive falls back to its standard built-in US template — so donors always get a usable document even if a custom template hasn't been finished.

3. Canadian Tax Receipting

Availability: This section applies to Canadian organizations. Enabling it switches your tax documents to the official CRA-compliant receipt format and disables US custom templates.

You'll find these settings under Portal Settings → Advanced Settings → Tax Documents → Canadian Tax Receipting.

Enable Canadian Tax Receipting

This is the master switch for Canadian mode. When enabled, it:

• Changes all generated receipts to the CRA-compliant Canadian format.

• Switches the receipt emails donors receive to the Canadian receipt format.

• Tracks each issued receipt with an official receipt record.

• Adjusts year-end totals so that transactions which already received an individual Canadian receipt aren't double-counted on the annual statement.

Allow donors to download tax receipts from their profile

This sub-option controls donor self-service. When checked, donors can download their own Canadian receipts from their portal profile. When unchecked, donors cannot pull receipts themselves — but you can still issue receipts to them from the dashboard. (Admin-issued receipts always work regardless of this setting; it only affects donor-facing access.)

Receipt Issuer Basic Info

CRA receipts must identify who issued them. Fill in:

• Issuer Name — the name shown as the issuer on the receipt.

• Issuer Role — the issuer's title or role (e.g., CEO, Treasurer).

Both appear directly on every generated Canadian receipt, so accuracy matters for compliance.

Receipt Issuer Signature

CRA receipts include an authorized signature. Use Edit Signature to draw or update the signature image. The saved signature is embedded on each generated Canadian receipt.

A note on receipts vs. acknowledgements

WeGive automatically generates an acknowledgement instead of an official tax receipt when a gift isn't eligible for a receipt — for example, when the donor is set not to receive tax receipts, or when the transaction is marked non-tax-deductible. This keeps your receipting compliant without manual sorting.

Canadian receipts are also assigned a unique receipt number (in the form Year-TransactionID-ReceiptNumber, e.g. 2025-1234-1), and reissuing a receipt increments that number.

4. How Canadian Receipting Differs from US

Enabling Canadian Tax Receipting doesn't just change formatting — it changes when receipts are issued, how they're numbered, what appears on them, and how year-end totals are calculated. If you support organizations in both countries, this is the section to understand.

The core difference is the receipting model:

• US centers on an annual year-end giving statement — one summary document covering all of a donor's gifts for the year.

• Canada centers on per-transaction official receipts — each qualifying donation gets its own CRA-compliant receipt, in addition to annual statements being available.

The two settings that drive all of this are Enable Canadian Tax Receipting (the master switch that flips an organization into Canadian mode) and Allow donors to download tax receipts from their profile (which governs donor self-service for those per-transaction receipts). Both are covered in section 3 above.

A practical implication worth flagging to customers: because Canada removes already-receipted gifts from the annual statement, a Canadian donor's year-end statement total may look lower than expected — those gifts were already covered by individual receipts and aren't double-counted. That's expected behavior, not a bug.

5. Year-End Statements (Bulk Download for Admins)

Separate from the donor portal, admins can generate a single bulk export of year-end giving statements for all donors at once. This is the fastest way to distribute statements outside the portal (for example, by mail merge or your own email tool).

You'll find this under Settings → Annual Tax Statement.

How to generate

1. Select the Year you want statements for.

2. Click Download Year-End Statements.

3. You'll see a confirmation that your report is being generated. The finished report appears in your Scheduled Exports table once ready (large donor lists are processed in the background, so it may take a few minutes).

What's in the export

The export is a CSV with one row per donor who gave that year. Each row includes:

• WeGive ID, donor name, and first name

• Up to three email addresses

• Total amount given and number of donations

• A link to that donor's tax document PDF (note: these links are temporary and expire after 7 days, so download what you need promptly)

• Mailing address fields (address, city, state/province, postal code, country)

• Salesforce ID and Salesforce Account ID (if applicable)

How this relates to the portal

The bulk export and the donor portal use the same underlying document generation, so the statement a donor downloads themselves matches what's linked in your admin export. The difference is access: the export gives admins bulk access to everyone, while the portal gives each donor self-service access to their own document.

Quick Setup Checklist

For US organizations:

1. Go to Portal Settings → Advanced Settings → Tax Documents.

2. Set Tax Document Downloads to "Yes" and choose your "up to and including" year.

3. Set Tax Receipt Visibility (individual and/or household).

4. (Optional) Enable Custom Tax Documents and design your template in the visual editor.

5. Under Portal Settings → Navigation, enable Tax Statements & History in the menu and/or header, then Save Changes.

6. For bulk distribution, use Settings → Annual Tax Statement to download year-end statements.

For Canadian organizations:

1. Go to Portal Settings → Advanced Settings → Tax Documents.

2. Check Enable Canadian Tax Receipting (this disables US custom templates).

3. Check Allow donors to download tax receipts from their profile if you want donor self-service.

4. Fill in Issuer Name and Issuer Role, and add your Issuer Signature.

5. Set Tax Document Downloads and Tax Receipt Visibility as needed.

6. Under Portal Settings → Navigation, enable Tax Statements & History, then Save Changes.

7. For bulk distribution, use Settings → Annual Tax Statement.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I customize the look of my Canadian tax receipts?
No. Canadian receipts follow a fixed CRA-compliant format and cannot be customized. The custom template feature is for US organizations only.

Why does a Canadian donor's year-end statement total look lower than their actual giving?
Canada excludes gifts that already received an individual receipt from the annual statement to avoid double-counting. Those gifts are still receipted — just on the individual receipts rather than the year-end statement. This is expected.

Why don't my donors see a tax documents section even though I enabled downloads?
Check that Tax Statements & History is enabled in the menu or header under Portal Settings → Navigation. Downloads being on isn't enough — the navigation item also has to be visible.

Why can't a donor download their Canadian receipt?
Make sure Allow donors to download tax receipts from their profile is checked. Without it, only admins can issue receipts.

My household donors don't see a household receipt — why?
Household receipts require both Show household tax receipts to be checked and household/group management to be enabled for your organization.

A donor got an "acknowledgement" instead of a tax receipt. Is that a bug?
No. WeGive issues an acknowledgement when a gift isn't receiptable — for example, the donor is set not to receive tax receipts, or the transaction isn't tax-deductible.

The download link in my year-end export doesn't work anymore.
Those links expire after 7 days. Re-generate the year-end statements export to get fresh links.