Monday 30 June 2014

Annual return consultation

The Charity Commission is currently consulting on proposed changes to the Annual Return that it uses to collect information and make publicly available from registered charities. Key themes underpinning proposals are improving accountability and transparency.

A key proposal is to increase the information requested from smaller charities (those with income between £10k and £500k) and all CIOs with an income under £500k. This includes asking for a variety of analyses of a charity’s income and expenditure.

The proposals also cover potential new information requests in the areas of campaigning expenditure, source of incomes, executive remuneration policy and whether a charity has carried out a review of its financial controls during the year. The closing date for responses to this consultation is 12 August 2014.

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Making the accounts process easier!

This item is specifically relevant for those organisations for whom we do accounts work. In recent e-bulletins we have covered the practicalities of key stages we follow when preparing or examining your accounts. This is to help make the process as efficient and effective as possible and enable us to give you the best service we can.

We have put together all the separate guidance into one short and easy document.

It also includes some hints and tips about the process and covers important things such as timescales for filing your accounts with relevant regulators.

Following these simple steps will help us to turn your accounts round promptly. This is particularly important over the summer months when accounts work is very busy. Please note if you don’t do this and drop off accounting records without making arrangements with us first or if they are not complete we can’t guarantee having them ready for when you want them! 

If you have any queries please do let us know.

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Charity SORP now live!

Following up on previous news items, the Charities SORP (Statement of Recommended Practice) has now been formally approved by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC).

The SORP is an important document for anyone interested in charity accounting both as preparers and users of charity accounts and reports. You can find a brief summary about the SORP, what it is and why it is important on one of our earlier news page items.

It is anticipated that the finalised SORP will be published on the dedicated micro-site  during the summer. It will take effect for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2015.

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E-learning roll-out - first course soon!

As a positive step forward in offering you more choice in how you access our training, we are pleased to announce we will shortly be rolling out our first online e-learning course. This will be a short course (roughly 4 hours to complete) focusing on aspects of financial control and aimed at trustees, finance staff and anyone with responsibility for finance. 

Please look out for further details about the launch over the next few weeks. In the meantime if you have any questions or want further information please contact our Leeds Community Accountant Claire Welling.

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Good Practice Guides

Just a reminder that our range of good practice guides cover a broad range of finance, accounting and related governance topics. They are freely available from our website, though it does require a one-time registration to access. In the pipeline, to accompany one of our most popular guides – Presenting financial and other management information effectively we will be producing a companion guide summarising some of the practicalities and ‘how to’s about presenting  financial data.

If you think there are any topics or areas where it would be useful to have a guide or have any other feedback, please let us know.

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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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