What goes in a receipts and payments account?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: the same two-part requirement, with no difference in principle. OSCR publishes its own receipts and payments work pack. Its own research found that charities using it needed far less regulatory contact than those that did not. Northern Ireland: the same two-part requirement, with no difference in principle. CCNI publishes its own guidance on preparing these accounts.

Does a receipts and payments account need both parts?

Yes: a receipts and payments account and a statement of assets and liabilities are both required, every year. Ask most treasurers what a receipts and payments account is, and they describe the summary of money in and out. That is one half of it.

The rule is the same in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The summary alone is not enough. Nor is the summary with the second statement added only when it seems relevant. This page assumes the trustees have already decided the charity may, and will, use this basis; if not, first determine which accounts to prepare.

CCNI’s latest monitoring update names an incomplete statement of assets and liabilities as a finding that keeps coming up in the accounts it reviews. In the Charity Commission’s own data, a real share of the smallest charities file without one. Neither regulator treats it as optional. Neither lets a charity skip it because income was simple that year.

What goes in each part?

A receipts and payments account is a cash summary of every receipt and every payment for the year, under simple headings. Each figure sits beside the matching figure from the year before. It answers one question: money in, money out, this year against last.

A statement of assets and liabilities is a list of what the charity owns and owes at the year end. It is not a balance sheet in the accruals sense. You do not have to value everything precisely, or to apply accruals concepts to it. But it does have to list what exists:

• cash and bank balances
• other assets, such as property or equipment held
• any liabilities outstanding

A reader comparing the two documents should see what moved during the year. They should also see what the charity holds at the end of it.

Are receipts the same as gross income?

No: some receipts are not income at all for threshold purposes. The two documents record cash movements, and not every cash movement is income.

A charity may sell a vehicle, take out a loan, or receive money into permanent endowment. It records every one of those as a receipt, because the cash did arrive. But each is left out when working out gross income for the registration, accounts-basis and scrutiny tests — the charity accounting thresholds.

The short statutory definition of gross income does none of the practical work on its own. The regulators’ guidance does, and it is set out with the accounts-basis test itself.

Treating the two figures as the same is the most common way a receipts and payments preparer gets a threshold test wrong. A charity that sold a building this year can look much larger on its cash account than its real gross income. So can a charity that raised a loan.

Keep the account and the income test separate from the start. Then the rest of this hub’s determinations stay reliable.

Does the new SORP change receipts and payments accounts?

No: the new SORP changes do not affect this account. The SORP-making body confirms expressly that receipts and payments accounts sit outside the SORP altogether. The option is a statutory alternative to accruals accounting under the Charities SORP, not a simpler version of it. Nothing about preparing this account has changed because of SORP 2026, whatever else has changed for accruals preparers.

A receipts and payments charity skips the accruals pages that follow. Its next step is to prepare the scrutiny file if its accounts need examination, then to approve and sign the accounts and file your accounts.

Common mistake: omitting the statement of assets and liabilities

The receipts and payments summary feels like the whole job. The second statement is short enough to overlook.

CCNI names it as a finding that keeps coming up. In the Commission’s own data, a real share of the smallest charities filed without it. The accounts are incomplete without it, not just light on detail.

Common mistake: leaving out prior-year comparatives

The template gets filled in for the current year only. Usually, last year’s figures are not to hand when the account is prepared. OSCR found this in several sets of accounts it reviewed, mostly receipts and payments accounts. It declined some of them and required them to be sent again.

Common mistake: using income and expenditure headings on a receipts and payments account

The words “income” and “expenditure” are more familiar than “receipts” and “payments”. Templates and treasurers reach for them out of habit. Those words describe the wrong basis for the account. OSCR has contacted charities about this.

Common mistake: counting endowment received, loans, or sale proceeds as gross income

They are real receipts, so they belong in the account. They are not gross income. Counting them as gross income overstates the figure that decides which scrutiny and accounts-basis rules apply. The section on whether receipts are the same as gross income explains why the two figures differ.

Worked example

Wrenfield Village Hall sells an old minibus it no longer uses. The sale proceeds are a receipt. They appear in Wrenfield’s receipts and payments account for the year, exactly as any other money coming in would.

When Wrenfield’s treasurer checks the charity’s gross income against the registration and accounts thresholds, though, those same proceeds are excluded. Gross income and the cash total on the account answer two different questions. Wrenfield’s determination has to use the right one for each.