Tuesday 30 June 2015

PQASSO award

We are delighted to report that earlier this month WYCAS (after a lot of hard work!) was awarded the PQASSO Quality Mark at Level 1 following an external review managed by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). PQASSO is a leading quality standard developed for use by the voluntary sector and endorsed by the Charity Commission.

You can find out more about why we wanted to achieve this standard and what this involved here.

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Updated Excel Cashbook - free download

We all love a freebie and here at WYCAS we have an excellent offering to help you with your bookkeeping and year end accounts.

It is an update to our Excel spreadsheet cashbook which in addition to generating reports for you NOW also generates a year end account which is adequate for those groups / charities which do not do accruals accounting and do not require an independent examination.  So, goodbye to accountancy fees!

As a bonus, if you need help to familiarise yourself with the system you may be eligible to attend a free workshop or advice surgery session on how to set up, record bank and cash transactions, reconcile and use the reports.  Please contact the WYCAS community accountant for your area for more details.

You can download the cashbook from the tools section of our website. Choose Cashbook - excel format from the top of the page.

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Be clear on employee status!

This month we commissioned PERS  to run a training session on employment status to give guidance for organisations with paid workers. It is really important that organisations are clear about whether the people it engages are employees or self-employed because the HR responsibilities and tax obligations are not the same.

One of the key learning points was that organisations (and individuals) can anonymously use the HMRC’s on-line Employment Status Indicator (ESI) tool to directly check their own circumstances. Subject to certain conditions you can then subsequently rely on the outcome from the ESI tool as evidence of a worker's status for the purposes of tax and national insurance contributions and HMRC will be bound by this outcome.

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Financial Services Compensation Scheme

An issue we’ve recently seen with some of the larger charities we work with is that a few of them have been holding large cash balances either in a single bank account or within several different accounts at the same institution.

Naturally there will always be a focus on the rate of return achievable and on the flexibility of access to funds. Whilst it may not be a significant risk, it is useful to keep in mind that there is a limit to the protection that is offered in terms of compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) should your bank ever get in to a position where it is unable to repay your deposit. Generally this limit is £85,000 per qualifying financial institution with amounts above this threshold not being covered.

We have prepared a short news item with more detail and some useful links to FSCS material on the scheme particulars.

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Accounts survey reminder

At WYCAS we are always keen to know what you think about our work so we can make improvements. If we do your annual accounts, the Management Letter we issue to you at the end of our work, in addition to highlighting key issues and recommendations for improvement, also includes a link to a very short on-line survey.

This asks for your feedback on how you thought we did. If you receive this, we would very grateful if you could spare a couple of minutes to fill it in and help us (you don’t have to give your name!)

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Governance Academy

Just a reminder about the Governance Academy initiative that Voluntary Action Leeds launched in the Spring. This is a programme to help the sector locally to manage and run their organisations effectively. WYCAS is providing support on aspects of financial governance. There is a wealth of free governance materials and guidance with regular updates, the latest being short briefings on the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill and The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015.

Leeds based charities specifically are invited to take up free membership which will also give the opportunity to attend up to four Charity Law seminars to be held each year.

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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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WYCAS provides a range of specialist services designed to meet the needs of the third sector:
• One to one support and training
• Preparation of year-end accounts
• Independent examination
• Financial training courses and workshops
• Computerising accounts
• Bookkeeping and management accounts
• Advice and information
• Bespoke consultancy projects

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