1. The mail upon receipt is taken to a seperate, locked mail room.

2. The mail is then sorted into the various charities. This is done upon receipt, extracting any "gone aways" or returned mail.

3. Once the mail has been sorted into charities a count of envelopes received that day is made for each charity and recorded on a mail receipt sheet. Freepost envelopes and stamped envelopes are recorded separately.

4. Upon opening the envelopes the donations are sorted into the various campaigns for each charity.

5. At the end of the month the mail receipt record is entered onto a spreadsheet for comparison with the monthly Royal mail invoice.

Before preparing a batch the batch numbers are recorded in the batch book. This will be the next available batch number. The batch number corresponds to the day's date. It is denoted by month then day of the month. For example for the 12th October will be batch number 1012, the 14th of October 1014 and so on. Each batch number will have a suffix starting at A. Then each additional batches have a suffix

1. On emptying the contents of the envelope the amount received is checked against the donation slip. Any differences against the amount received and that stated by the donor should be noted on the slip.

2. The type of payment received are clearly noted on the slip using the following Codes:

Cash
Cheque
Credit Card
Postal Order
CAF
Other

Any card payments are placed in a separate batch.

The donation slips are put into piles by payment type e.g. all slips with cash donations in one pile, slips with cheques in another and so on.

Cash
All the cash slips for a particular campaign have an add listing made. This is checked against the cash on hand. A breakdown of the cash is recorded on a cash breakdown sheet and the cash is then placed in a plastic wallet for banking.

Cheques
With cheque donations we ensure the cheque is signed, the date is valid, the amount in words and the amount in numbers corresponds. In instances where cheques are not completed correctly these are separated, and we write to the donor to inform them of the problem using standard form letters.

Cheques and slips are counted into batches of 50. As this is done the cheques are separated and placed in separate piles. The cheques (with total for each batch) are placed into a plastic wallet and passed on for banking.

Credit Cards
Card payments are checked to ensure the card number, expiration date and signature have been provided. If any of these elements is missing, a standard form letter will be sent to the donor alerting them of the missing information.

Postal Orders
Are treated as the same with cheques except the name on the slip should be written on the reverse side of the Postal Order.

CAF Vouchers
The batch ID number, Campaign and batch number is written on the top right hand corner of the CAF vouchers and other vouchers. For any vouchers that are not accompanied by a donation form an IDS (Internal Donation slip) is completed. Where these vouchers are from anonymous donors then the IDS are marked anonymous and attributed to the campaign with most responses for that day. The CAF vouchers and other vouchers are passed for separate processing.

Donations without slips
If any envelopes contain donations without a response slip an IDS (Internal Donation Slip) form is completed. Any information from correspondence or material that accompanied the donation is attached to the slip.

Adjustment slips and other materials
Any other slips, letters or materials without funds enclosed such as requesting removal from database, advising of death of donor etc should be placed in a separate batch.

Batch Header
Once sorted by campaign donation slips for each particular campaign can be batched together regardless of payment type (with the exception of card payments) and listed on the batch header.

The batch headers are signed and dated. The batch header is attached to the response slips and all are passed on for data processing.