Reporting and compliance

The reporting year is the part of charity life with real deadlines and real consequences for missing them. Most failures here are administrative. Several are criminal offences, and one of them can put a person in prison.

This part also covers what to do when something has already gone wrong — a late filing, a serious incident, a mistake found after submission. Those pages are written on the assumption that you are reading them in a hurry and need the answer in the first paragraph.

Understand

Explainers for this part are not published yet.

Look up

Glossary

• Charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)
• Charities SORP
• Board of trustees
• Outcomes
• Impact
• Trustees’ annual report
• Annual return
• Gross income
• Public benefit
• Designated funds
• Accounting reference date
• Free reserves
• Going concern
• OSCR
• Receipts and payments accounts

Tools

• Annual return question checker — Tool: planned
• Charity deadlines calendar
• First filing deadline calculator
• Is this a serious incident? — Tool: planned
• TAR content builder — Tool: planned
• What must I file? — Tool: planned

Templates

• Annual return data pack — Template: planned
• Compliance calendar — Template: planned
• Retention schedule — Template: planned
• Serious incident assessment — Template: planned
• TAR content checklist — Template: planned
• TAR financial review — Template: planned
• TAR narrative sections — Template: planned