Preparation of statutory accounts compliant with the Charities SORP.

Comprehensive annual accounts preparation support, from your charity’s trial balance.

Complete compliance with the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice guaranteed, through completion of a full disclosure checklist review approach provided by a leading UK technical partner.

Prompts to address key areas in the Trustees’ Annual Report, so your charity conveys the best impression to new and existing stakeholders.

Clear analysis and breakdown supporting every disclosure, ready for examination or audit.

The requirement:

UK charities must prepare and submit year-end annual reports and financial statements to the Charity Commission (unless they are tiny). These should comply with the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice where relevant size thresholds are met — the accounting framework for mainstream charities in the UK.

Ring 0208 159 6911 for free advice on your charity’s annual accounts and scrutiny requirements. Or request a quote using the form at the bottom of the page.

An introduction to UK charity year-end accounts and Charity Commission filing requirements.

Thoroughfare’s specialist offer:

Drawing on extensive experience preparing and auditing the accounts of financial statements prepared under the Charities SORP and UK Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, Thoroughfare offers the following services to the sector:

  • Creation of year-end charity financial statements in the format required, from trial balance. A clear, logical spreadsheet mechanism with all the primary statements and notes populated from core data in the trial balance, with adjustments shown separately with explanation, and ownership taken over all year-end journals required to finalise the figures.

  • Management of the production of the annual report and accounts and accounts document, prompting your charity to include all disclosure and achieve full compliance with the SORP and other laws and guidance, and a full disclosure check performed via the software of a sector-leading technical partner.

  • Optional: for those charities subject to audit — assistance to finance teams in preparing necessary deliverables prior to external audit fieldwork, with attendance at meetings and responses to auditor queries as needed.

The benefits of an external accounts preparer.

Why engage a partner like Thoroughfare to prepare financial statements compliant with the Charities SORP rather than prepare them in-house?

  • Financial statements prepared in accordance with the Charities SORP can be long and complex — preparing a set requires experience unless activities are straight forward.

    The trustees’ annual report is a key compliance document of interest to new and existing stakeholders: a vital annual demonstration of the achievement of public benefit. A range of law, guidance and standards mandate the inclusion of different sections, content and references, all of which must be given due consideration; as should the requirements of the rest of the document.

    Thoroughfare will provide a comprehensive template for the annual report with useful information for statutory sections, and suggestions for interesting content and impact reporting.

    After the annual report, a statement of financial activities (the charity version of a ‘profit and loss account’), a balance sheet, cash flow statement (unless exempt), statement of accounting policies and various notes to the financial statements must be prepared; along with an independent examiner’s or auditor’s report, signed by the party completing the scrutiny exercise.

    Charity accounts need to adopt an approach known as fund accounting — sums which are unrestricted, restricted, designated and endowed need to be shown separately throughout. Charities SORP compliant accounts also include disclosures of the nature you wouldn’t normally see in company accounts, with the aim of transparency; for example around higher paid staff, expenses paid to trustees, the purpose of ‘fund pots’ and how they will be spent.

  • The production of Charities SORP compliant year-end accounts is an additional duty for a charity’s finance team, over and above operational and day-to-day activities.

    A logical, comprehensive spreadsheet mechanism with supporting schedules for every disclosure is prepared by Thoroughfare and designed to save time, both for finance personnel, internal reviewers and the independent examiner or auditor.

  • Using a market-leading technical partner’s disclosure checklist software, Thoroughfare completes a full disclosure review from start to finish of the annual report and accounts document, to ensure every disclosure, section, note and reference driven by applicable accounting standards, laws, regulations and guidance is addressed.

    Charities can be assured there will be no nasty surprises a few weeks later from the regulator.

  • So long as the process Thoroughfare has gone through during the year-end accounts preparation doesn’t lead to a substantial self-review threat Thoroughfare can usually carry out an independent examination too.

    Thoroughfare can submit the charity’s annual return to the Charity Commission, which contains a few questions which require more thought than previously (from 2023 onwards) due to recent Commission updates.

    Thoroughfare’s quotes for multiple exercises and ongoing support factor in discounts, to reflect efficiencies and goodwill.