There are some 170,000 charities in the UK and all these charities are required to maintain accounting records, even the 80,000 that have an annual income of under £10,000. The larger charities must submit their accounts on an annual basis to the Charity Commission.

Background

Heroes Run

In 2008 I ran the Heroes Run, a 10km sponsored run in which all the participants dress up as superheroes for charity. I was Bananaman, my sister Zoro and my partner Catwomen and my time is not relevant! The event is organised by the charity passingiton, a charity with a worthy mission building schools in Africa.

Passingiton needed help filing its annual charity accounts which were overdue. As a chartered accountant with an online accounts system in development, I stepped in.

There are three documents that a charity with income above the reporting threshold must send to the Charity Commission each year:

1. Charity Accounts
2. Independent Examiner’s Report
3. Trustee’s Annual Report

Let’s go through them in more detail:

1. Charity Accounts Like most small charities busy raising sponsorship and collecting donations, passingiton was not focused on the finances. However, after an afternoon spent loading historic bank statement transactions into the online accounts system, two year’s worth of accounts were soon up to date and perfectly organised within Clear Books. The charity accounts were then sourced from the Clear Books financial reporting and signed off by the trustees.Clear Books is a free and simple software package that records and maintains charity accounts.
2. Independent Examiner’s Report An independent examiner is responsible for reviewing charity accounts to ensure that the charity has been run properly over the financial year. As a chartered accountant I am eligible and was asked to be an independent examiner for passingiton.The charity is based in Brighton and I live in London, but as the accounts are online, I was able to log on to the Clear Books website at home and view all the data that had been previously uploaded. Some corrections later and having confirmed balances to physical bank statements and invoices, I was able to sign off the Independent Examiner’s Report.Clear Books is a web based accounts system which makes it flexible and available to different stakeholders of the charity.
3. Trustees’ Annual Report The Trustees’ Annual Report is a document that describes the main goals and achievements of the charity during the financial year. It is a document completed and signed off by the trustees.

This may seem somewhat overwhelming to a new charity, fortunately Clearbooks takes the hassle out of preparing your charity’s accounts.

A free accounting system for charities

The experience with passingiton showcased how Clear Books can help other charities who are not concerned with finances but rather focused on their charitable work. These are organisations that are not going to spend vast sums of money on accounting systems, so we decided that they should be able to benefit from our online accounting software for free. By joining for free we believe that small charities will benefit from:

• A robust and organised accounting system to accurately record finances
• The ability for trustees, examiners and accountants to view the accounts online
• Ultimately saving time on admin to spend more time running a successful charity