Titles
- No more than 4 characters. "Mr", "Mrs", "Ms", "Miss", "Dr" and "Revd" fit. "Professor" and "Reverend" do not, so shorten them or leave the title blank. A blank title is allowed.
- No full stops. "Mr." or "Dr." will fail, because HMRC's technical rules only allow letters, apostrophes and hyphens in the title.
First name
- Up to 35 characters. The template says to enter it with no spaces, or just an initial. If a donor has two first names, use the first one, or the first one and nothing else.
- HMRC recommends a full name rather than an initial where you have it, because it helps them match donors.
Last name
- Up to 35 characters.
- For double-barrelled surnames, HMRC says to use a space instead of the hyphen: "Smith Jones", not "Smith-Jones".
Full name in one column?
Many exports have a single "Name" column. You will need to split it into title, first name and last name. Watch out for business names, couples ("Mr and Mrs Patel") and names with prefixes such as "van der". A couple giving jointly needs to be split according to whose declaration it is.
It must match the declaration
Use the name on the donor's Gift Aid declaration. Bank references are often shortened or abbreviated, so check them against the declaration rather than copying them across.
Donor Schedule splits full names, removes full stops from titles, replaces hyphens in surnames and flags anything it is not sure about.
Source: HMRC schedule spreadsheet guidance and the template's own instructions.
This page is general guidance based on HMRC's published schedule spreadsheet guidance and template, checked on 20 October 2026. It is not tax advice, and HMRC's own pages take priority if they change. Donor Schedule is not affiliated with HMRC.
Let the free checker find these for you
Load your donation export and see every row HMRC is likely to reject, with the reason and the fix. Nothing is uploaded, and you don't need an account.