What are a charity's reporting requirements, and when are they due?
Charity reporting requirements run from the financial year end, and which filings apply depends on the charity's income, structure and regulator. The steps take trustees and treasurers through them in order: first-year deadlines, the annual return, the trustees' annual report and filing the accounts. Later steps cover Companies House, what is published, serious incidents, corrections and inquiries, for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
21 steps, in the order you meet them.
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.
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
Understand
- Annual return questions — What questions does the charity annual return ask?
Do
- Step 1 · When is my charity's first annual return due, and for what period?
- Step 2 · What are all my charity's filing deadlines, and when do they fall? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 3 · Does my small charity have to file anything at all? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 4 · How long must a charity keep its records? · legal risk: criminal
- Step 5 · How soon must I tell the regulator about trustee or address changes? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 6 · What information do I need before I start the annual return?
- Step 7 · What questions does the charity annual return actually ask? · legal risk: criminal
- Step 8 · What does a Scottish charity have to submit to OSCR each year? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 9 · What does a Northern Ireland charity have to submit each year?
- Step 10 · What does our trustees' annual report have to include?
- Step 11 · What do we write about our objectives, activities and achievements?
- Step 12 · What must the financial review say about our reserves? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 13 · Who signs off the annual report and when?
- Step 14 · How and when do I file my charity's accounts? · legal risk: criminal
- Step 15 · What must a charitable company file at Companies House, and when? · legal risk: criminal
- Step 16 · Who can see our accounts, and do we have to publish them ourselves? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 17 · What counts as a serious incident, and does charity size matter? · legal risk: criminal
- Step 18 · How quickly must we report a serious incident, and who does it? · legal risk: criminal
- Step 19 · What happens after we report a serious incident?
- Step 20 · How do we correct a charity filing we got wrong? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 21 · What triggers a Charity Commission inquiry and what happens to us? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
Common questions
Under the Charities SORP, a trustees' annual report should cover at least objectives and activities, achievements, a financial review, plans, governance and reference details. The accounting basis and SORP tier decide the rest: see Step 10, Establish your SORP tier and your report's contents.
The charity annual return in England and Wales asks eight sections of questions, from income and overseas spending to governance and a serious incident declaration. Income and structure switch some questions on or off, and none asks about AI or cyber security. The full list is in Annual return questions.
In England and Wales, the annual return is due 10 months after the financial year end, the same date as the annual report and accounts. OSCR and CCNI set their own deadlines, and every filing date is in Step 2, Build your annual compliance calendar.
In England and Wales, failing to file is an offence by each trustee in office at the deadline, though the Charity Commission's visible practice is escalation, not prosecution. A charitable company also faces an automatic Companies House penalty. Step 14, File your accounts and annual report with the regulator, sets out both.
A formal inquiry is what unlocks the Charity Commission's serious powers, such as suspending trustees. Persistent non-filing is the route most charities meet, through reminders and a final warning before a class inquiry. Step 21, Respond to a regulator query or inquiry, sets out the sequence and the powers that need no inquiry.