How to Make Year-End Giving Statements from Excel or Google Sheets

If your church or nonprofit keeps giving records in a spreadsheet, or can export them to one, you're most of the way to year-end statements already. This guide covers:

• the layout that works
• a quick cleanup checklist
• two ways to turn the sheet into one statement per donor
• how to get the data out of Planning Center, Tithe.ly, Breeze and QuickBooks Online

The short version: one row per gift, with columns for donor name, date and amount. Upload that file to the free statement tool and download a PDF for every donor. The file is read in your browser and never uploaded.

Try it with your spreadsheet

Step 1: Use one row per gift

Year-end statements list gifts per donor, so the spreadsheet should have one row for each gift, not one row per donor with a column per week. Here's a small example (made-up data):

Donor Name	Address	City	State	ZIP	Email	Date	Amount	Fund	Payment Method	Check Number
Daniel Brooks	45 Elm Court	Anytown	TX	00000	[email protected]	01/04/2026	200.00	General Fund	Check	2201
Daniel Brooks	45 Elm Court	Anytown	TX	00000	[email protected]	03/29/2026	150.00	Missions	Online
Maria Lopez	780 Pine Street, Apt 4	Anytown	TX	00000	[email protected]	03/29/2026	100.00	General Fund	Online

Download this sample spreadsheet (CSV)

Columns you need

Column	Required?	Notes
Donor name (or First name + Last name)	Yes	Spell each donor's name the same way on every row. Different spellings become different donors.
Date	Yes	Any common format works (01/04/2026, 2026-01-04, Jan 4, 2026). Tell the tool whether 03/04 means March 4 or April 3.
Amount	Yes	Numbers like 200, 200.00 or $1,200.00.
Address, City, State, ZIP	Recommended	Needed if you mail statements.
Email	Optional	Goes into the mail-merge list if you email statements.
Fund / designation	Optional	Shows on itemized statements and powers the "totals by fund" layout.
Payment method, Check number	Optional	Helps donors match gifts to their bank records.
Status	Optional	Rows marked refunded, failed or pending are skipped automatically.

Column names don't have to match exactly. The tool recognizes common headers like "Gift Amount", "Received At", "Designation" and "Giver". It also lets you fix anything it guesses wrong.

Step 2: Clean up before you upload (10 minutes)

• [ ] One year only. Filter to January 1 – December 31, 2026. The tool also lets you pick the statement year.
• [ ] Same donor, same name. Merge "Bob Smith", "Robert Smith" and "Smith, Robert" into one spelling. For couples, pick one household name, such as "James and Carol Whitfield".
• [ ] Remove total and subtotal rows. Rows that are only totals are skipped, but it's cleaner to delete them.
• [ ] Remove refunds and failed payments, or keep a Status column so they're skipped. Negative and zero amounts are skipped too.
• [ ] Leave out non-gifts. Event fees, bookstore sales and camp registrations with no gift element aren't contributions.
• [ ] Check the ZIP codes. Excel drops leading zeros (02134 becomes 2134). The tool adds them back for 5-digit US ZIPs, but check a few.
• [ ] Non-cash gifts go elsewhere. IRS Publication 1771 says acknowledgments should describe donated property but not give its value, so leave in-kind gifts out of the amount column and acknowledge them separately.
• [ ] Check late-December checks. IRS Publication 526 says "a check you mail to a charity is considered delivered on the date you mail it." A check mailed December 31 generally belongs to 2026 even if you deposit it in January.
• [ ] Reconcile. The sheet's total should match your deposits or giving-platform reports for the year.

Google Sheets users: use File → Download → Comma-separated values (.csv) or Microsoft Excel (.xlsx). Either file works.

Step 3: Turn the sheet into statements

Option A: Word mail merge

Microsoft Word's mail merge makes one letter per spreadsheet row. That works well for a letter that shows only a total. You'd first build a summary sheet with one row per donor (name, address, total), for example with a PivotTable.

Listing each gift inside each donor's letter is harder. A standard merge puts each gift row in its own letter. So you either pre-summarize the data or use extra merge tricks. Microsoft's guide to the basics: Mail merge using an Excel spreadsheet.

Option B: The free Giving Statements tool

This keeps your gift-by-gift layout and makes a separate, itemized PDF for each donor:

1. Upload your CSV or Excel file (or click "Try it with sample data" first).
2. Check the columns. The tool guesses which column is the name, date, amount and so on. Fix anything that's wrong, and set the date order (US month/day or day/month).
3. Add your organization details and letter. Enter your name, address, optional EIN, signer and logo. Then add a thank-you message with placeholders like {first_name} and {total}, and choose the goods-and-services line: - "No goods or services were provided…" - the church version with "…other than intangible religious benefits" - "Leave it out"
4. Review donors. See who's included and which rows were skipped (and why).
5. Download. You can get: - a ZIP with one PDF per donor - one combined PDF for printing - a mail-merge list (CSV) with each donor's email, total and PDF filename, so you can send statements from your own email account

It's free for up to 5 donors, with a small "free version" mark. Pro ($9/month or $59/year) adds unlimited donors, no watermark, and saves your logo and templates.

Privacy: the page reads your file on your own computer. Donor names and amounts are never sent to us or anyone else.

Exporting from common giving platforms

If all your gifts are already in one church-management or giving platform, try its built-in statements first. Planning Center, Tithe.ly and Breeze all have one. A spreadsheet is the better route when:

• you're combining an online platform with checks and cash recorded somewhere else
• you're switching systems mid-year
• you want a layout the platform doesn't offer

Menu names change. The steps below follow each company's help center as of September 2026, so check the linked article if a button has moved.

Planning Center Giving

In Giving, open Donations → Reports → By donation. Set the date range (and funds, if you want), then select the download arrow to export a CSV (Planning Center help: Reports by donation). The export includes the donor name, date, amount, fund and payment source. The tool recognizes Planning Center's "Received At" date column.

Tithe.ly

Tithe.ly's help center describes exporting from Giving → Transactions: set the date range to the full year, apply any filters, then Export to download a CSV (Tithe.ly help: How to Export Transactions).

Breeze

Breeze's help center describes a full export under Account Settings → Manage Account → Export (choose Contributions). For large accounts, it suggests exporting a year at a time from Giving reports (Breeze help: Exporting Your Data).

QuickBooks Online

Users in Intuit's community forum report that QuickBooks customer statements may leave out Sales Receipts, so they aren't a reliable giving statement (QuickBooks Community thread). A common approach:

1. Run a report of contributions by donor for the full year, covering all your contribution income accounts. Intuit documents a "Sales and member contributions" report for this (Intuit help).
2. Export it to Excel.
3. Make sure there's one row per gift, with donor, date and amount columns.
4. Remove the subtotal rows.

PayPal, Venmo, Givelify, Zeffy and others

Most payment and giving apps let you download transactions as a CSV. The tool recognizes common layouts from PayPal activity downloads, Venmo statements, Givelify, Tithe.ly, Planning Center and Zeffy, and you can map the columns yourself for anything else. With PayPal and Venmo exports, keep only incoming donation payments, not transfers or purchases.

Combining several sources without double-counting

1. Put each export on its own tab, then copy them into one sheet with the same column headers (Donor Name, Date, Amount, Fund, Method).
2. Watch for gifts recorded twice. For example, an online gift might appear in both the giving platform export and your bookkeeping export. Keep one source of truth for each type of gift.
3. Make names consistent across sources: "Brooks, Daniel" in one and "Daniel Brooks" in another. If you use separate First name and Last name columns, the tool combines them.
4. Check the combined total against your bank deposits for the year.

Frequently asked questions

What has to be on a giving statement? IRS Publication 1771 lists the organization's name, the amount of each cash gift, a description (not value) of any non-cash gift, and a statement about whether goods or services were provided. See the full summary and filled-in samples.

How many donors can I do for free? Five. The first five donors sorted by last name get a statement with a small "free version" mark. That's enough to check the layout before you decide on Pro.

Do I need to install anything? No. It runs in your web browser. There's no account and no download, and after the page loads the file never leaves your computer.

Can it email the statements for me? No. The tool never sends email. It gives you the PDFs plus a mail-merge list, so the statements come from your organization's own email address.

Make my giving statements · Blank statement template · Nonprofit version

Sources:

• IRS Publication 1771 (Rev. 11-2023)
• IRS Publication 526
• the vendor help articles linked above

Last checked September 2026. This is a plain-English guide, not tax or legal advice. Software menus change, so follow your vendor's current help article if a step looks different. Sample data is made up.