Time is one of the greatest resources your charity has. But do you ever find yourself wishing you had more of it? Between paperwork, organising stock, serving customers, and sorting donations, it’s easy to see how the hours slip away. Before you know it, a whole week’s gone by and you’ve barely scratched the surface of your to-do list.

Daily tasks like processing sales and Gift Aid paperwork are critical to running your charity. So any time spent on them definitely isn’t wasted. But it is a problem when they’re taking your staff and volunteers’ time and attention away from other core areas.. 

Today, we’re breaking down three operational tasks that are likely costing you more time than they should be. As well as our suggestions for how to make them more efficient.

Claiming Gift Aid 

Where would your charity be without Gift Aid? That extra 25% of revenue massively helps to push your cause forward. But staff can often pay the price in the form of tedious, long-winded processes.

For one, they have to fill out and store all donor declaration forms. While also respecting data compliance regulations to keep their information safe long-term. There’s also the time taken to manually submit claims to HMRC. While the additional revenue is well worth the time spent, there’s got to be a better way.

Shifting to a paperless Gift Aid process will help. With digital donor declarations, it takes less time to capture the necessary details. Plus, there’s no time spent organising paperwork afterwards, or trying to find forms for repeat donors. Even better if you can find a HMRC-recognised tool that streamlines the entire claims process too. Just imagine all the hours your staff and volunteers could save if the whole task was completed in a few clicks!

Locating data 

Running an efficient, successful retail operation requires a lot of oversight. There are all sorts of decisions for store and area managers to make – including on sales, stock, staff, and fundraising. 

It’s data that makes these decisions far simpler. But how much time do your staff spend just trying to locate the data they need? In a retail environment, you need to make informed decisions quickly. Whether it’s deciding on stock to request or a new floor plan, you don’t always have the luxury of waiting till the end of day for reports. 

The answer? Real-time data and reporting. With a cloud-based EPoS system, you can put important data and insights at your staff’s fingertips – no matter where they are. The quicker your staff access the data they need, the sooner they can make important decisions. And the more time they save for the rest of their roles and responsibilities.

Till transactions

An inefficient till process might not seem like a massive loss at first. But think about how many transactions your shop completes in a day. Then multiply this by how many stores you have. Every minute adds up and eats into critical time that could be spent elsewhere. Plus, inefficient transactions harm your customer experience. 84% of people say their experience with a business is more important than their product. 

So what can be done? The trick is to opt for a simple, intuitive system that minimises clicks per transaction and is easy for volunteers and staff to use. The more comfortable your staff are, the more efficient they’ll be and less likely to make mistakes. Your customers will be happy, with no time spent hanging around at the till point. And your charity will benefit from extra time saved for accepting donations, tidying the shop floor, or labelling new stock.

With only so much time in a day, it’s important your charity shop makes every minute count. By working to identify and resolve any inefficient processes, you can free up extra time to repurpose for increasing profits and making better decisions.

CHARiotWeb draws on decades of experience in the retail and charity sectors. Providing a seamless end-to-end Gift Aid solution, cloud-based reporting, and an intuitive till interface, you can wave goodbye to many of the inefficiencies that slow you down. To find out more about how it could help you, reach out to us on 01204 706 000.