ACCA members are often asked to assist small charities either as trustees or volunteers. When helping with the accounts you may find the Charity Commission’s accounts packs useful. Using a pack properly will ensure that the accounts are charities SORP compliant in the case of accruals accounts, and give an appropriate level of disclosure in the case of receipts and payments accounts. The packs may also be useful for ACCA members in practice preparing accruals accounts for charity clients.
Appendix 5.3.1 of SORP outlines the concessions available to smaller charities that are not subject to a statutory audit:
‘In relation to the Statement of Financial Activities (SoFA), smaller charities do not need to analyse either resources expended or incoming resources by activity categories within the Statement of Financial Activities. They may instead choose resource classifications to suit their circumstances.’
The Charity Commission published anaccruals accounts pack for small non company charities wishing to use natural categories on their SoFA. Accruals pack CC39 complements the packs already available: CC17 Accruals accounts pack, which analyses incoming resources and resources expended by charitable activity and CC16 Receipts and Payments accounts pack.
All three packs are available on the Charity Commission website in two versions. The PDF versions can be printed out and completed by hand. The Excel version can be completed electronically before being printed.