Thursday 18 December 2014

Merry Christmas!

We would like to wish all our service users, stakeholders, funders and supporters a very merry Christmas and a happy and peaceful New Year. Thank you for your support during the year and we look forward to serving you in 2015!

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Alert! – Accounts filing at the Charity Commission

We’ve identified quite a number of charities that, when submitting their accounts online to the Charity Commission, have wrongly stated that they are ‘qualified’ accounts. This is not good news!

Qualified accounts means there is some problem with your accounts or underlying records and a qualification will generally be viewed unfavourably by stakeholders and potential funders.

The Commission is now asking a specific question about whether accounts have been qualified. Despite the online guidance with the submission form, we think some are confusing the terms ‘examination’ and ‘qualification’. To help raise awareness we have blogged and also put together a short simple guide to help make sure you report correctly.

We have informed the Charity Commission which has corrected the error for the individual charities we have identified. If you have recently submitted your accounts to the Commission it may be worth confirming you have done this correctly. If you have any queries or need any help please let us know.

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E-learning - financial controls – starting soon

Just a reminder, that we will be running another e-learning course on financial controls in the new year. An essential aspect of financial governance, it is seeing an increase in profile due to recent changes by the Charity Commission in the information it asks for in the Annual Return that charities must submit. Charities will now be explicitly asked if they have reviewed their financial controls during the reporting period.

The e-learning course will help if you are unsure what this means or want to develop your knowledge about financial controls and how to implement them. It takes around half a day to complete and covers the key areas, to enable you to confidently answer YES when asked on the Annual Return.  Further information about the course, including cost and is available on our website.

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Evaluation survey

Thank you to all those organisations who took the time to complete our annual survey and give us their views.

Although the deadline has now passed, we can still sneak in any late returns if you would still like to have your views heard! We will be analysing the feedback and report back next month on the results.

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Some useful holiday reading!

If you are at a loose end over the holiday period (!)……. the Charity Commission regularly publishes short reports with the results of its casework and investigations of individual charities. These include Inquiry reports - the current focus being on certain types of charities which ‘double default’ (ie fail to file their accounts at least twice in the last five years) - and regulatory case work reports. The individual reports follow the same format, highlighting the issue being investigated, the corrective action taken, and most importantly the lessons for the wider sector. Typically, the Commission finds finance or governance related failures which underpin the matters being investigated.

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E-Bulletin

Our e-bulletin is issued on a monthly basis and sent directly to registered subscribers. It is also available from our website. Please note that information and resources contained in the e-bulletin are general in nature and not intended as specific advice or recommendations. We welcome any feedback on the content and format so that we can improve it and make sure it meets your needs. Please let us know  if you have any comments or suggestions.

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