The Salvation Army salutes gift aid with Azurri

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Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd (SATCoL) has selected Gift Aid specialist Azurri to deliver Gift Aid in its stores. Streamlining business processes as well as enabling the charity to launch the Retail Gift Aid Scheme, earning it more than £100,000 to date, supporting its rapid expansion plans.

Azurri, a long established supplier of retail solutions to both the general retail sector and the charity retail sector, has rolled out of the Gift Aid system on Toshiba POS, inclusive of a touchscreen terminal, within 135 of the Salvation Army shops over an 8 week period, following a successful two month trial in two stores.

Beverley Phillips, Finance Director, said, "We wanted to invest in a system that would provide business efficiencies and enable us to meet growth targets, and at the same time launch the Gift Aid Scheme alongside our loyalty scheme. Another key factor was ease of use for staff and volunteers".

Azurri were selected because they offered a totally managed service and had really easy to use software for the shops. The Azurri solution simplifies the Gift Aid process, including inputting donor names and addresses; capturing Gift Aid and sales data; providing sales reports and preparing completed donor letters and Gift Aid documentation automatically for submission to HM Revenue and Customs. "The fact that Azurri handle all of the Gift Aid administration enabled us to implement the system quickly and launch Gift Aid with our customer loyalty scheme, with no additional resource requirement or disruption to our current operations", said Beverley.

The Azurri solution also provides real time sales data at store level as well as the ability to incorporate email connectivity within a single device in the shop. This has improved the communication between head office and the shops and has reduced costs.  "The system has proved a massive time saver for Area Managers as we no longer have to be on the telephone collating information". Said Justin Frost,  Area Manager, SATCoL, "Also, shops no longer have to rely on 'word of mouth' reducing the potential for messages to be misinterpreted", Frost added.

Shop Managers, staff and volunteers have also embraced the new easy to use system which has made the reconciliation of any discrepancies significantly easier.  The ease of operation ensured staff needed only a few minutes to become confident in the sales process.

The project recently won IT Project of the Year Award at The Retail Systems 2012 Awards.