As we come toward the end of the financial year, I thought it would be helpful to remind you of a few things that your charity needs to be thinking of in preparation for some changes that are coming in.
1. Year End Accounts
All charities and churches, registered or not, should produce annual accounts to show their financial position and how they have used the funds that they have received as donations, grants and in Gift Aid. If you are a registered charity, then you need to lodge your annual accounts with the Charity Commission within 10 months of your year-end.
Most organisations have a year-end of either December or March. If your financial year ended in December and you have not yet arranged an Independent Examination of your accounts, or your financial year ends this month and you need to think about your plans for Independent Examination, then please give me a call to discuss your requirements and I would be happy to give you a quote.
Following recent consultation with the Third Sector, the threshold at which a charity will require their accounts to be audited is due to be raised from £500k to £1M. This requires the necessary statute to be in place which the Government aim to complete by 30th March in time for those with a year end from March 31st 2015 onwards. The threshold for Receipts and Payments accounting will remain at £250k for the moment, and if a charity has assets of £3.26M or above, they will still require an audit if their income reaches £500k.
2. Gift Aid
There are a few changes coming in relating to Gift Aid:
- From 6th April 2015, it will be a requirement to include a donor’s postcode. You will no longer be able to submit the full address but without the postcode.
- From 6th April 2015, the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme will allow you to claim Gift Aid on small donations received in the previous 3 years, raising this from the previous 2 years.
There are also ongoing discussions around the Gift Aid declaration and it is likely that a new, shorter form of wording will be released shortly.
If you need help in registering your charity to be able to receive Gift Aid (and who wouldn’t want to take up the offer of having money from the taxman!!), preparing a Gift Aid declaration, recording donations and making Gift Aid claims – or just need more information on the scheme, please get in touch.
3. Pension auto-enrolment
The UK government is seeking to improve the pension provision for individuals in view of our ageing population. It will require all employers to set up a pension scheme to which all employees that meet certain criteria will be enrolled. (The government are also providing a scheme that is run independently from government but that guarantees to accept all employers).
For each employee, there are minimum percentages of salary that both employer and employee will need to contribute to the pension scheme. Every employer has been allocated a “staging date” by which time this provision must be in place.
If you need to find out any further information on this, please get in touch and I can point you in the right direction.
4. SORP changes
For all accounts prepared under the accrual accounting method (a requirement for charities with income over £250k) there are changes that have just come in relating to the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP). The changes are considerable and give you options to choose between two SORPS – sometimes referred to as SORP and SORP Lite! If you are in this category, make sure you talk to your accountant well in advance.
If your income is below £250k, then you are able to prepare your financial statements to the simpler Receipts and Payments method. I am able to undertake Independent Examination of such accounts, and if you would like to discuss this, please give me a call.
We can help with all of these issues – and many more, such as:
Finance – Bookkeeping & payroll
Training – Trustee responsibilities, recruiting and managing staff, customer service
Governance – preparing a constitution, registering a charity, annual returns, governance review
Operations – writing policies and processes, operational review, feasibility study for a new project, auditing your operations
Identity Development
We also have a new offering that we have been developing that you may be interested in. Working with Mark Tugwell of Slingstone (www.slingstone.co.uk)and MT Photography & Imaging (www.marktugwell.co.uk), we can help your church/charity with Identity Development.This helps you to forge a unique identity for what your organisation stands for. It encompasses working with you to develop a Mission Statement, Ethos & Values and in setting the culture you want to underpin everything along with helping to plan your website, social media and graphics to match. If you are interested in talking to us further about this service, please give me a call.
This year of 2015 promises to be an exciting year – both for the voluntary sector and also for our business. If you want to talk to us about any ways that we may be able to help, please either call me on 07767 386040, or by email at paul@cmanagementservices.co.uk and I would be happy to chat with you. To find out more, take a look around our website.