Accounting and reporting

The charities SORP gives guidance on financial accounting and reporting for charitable entities. On this page you can access a range of articles, books and online resources providing quick links to the regulations, guidance and other key documentation.

The next iteration of the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) is on the horizon, bringing with it some significant updates aligned with the revised Financial Reporting Standard (FRS 102). These changes will impact key areas such as revenue recognition and lease accounting. While we don’t expect the consultation for the new SORP to be available before early 2025, charities can take proactive steps now to ensure they are well prepared for the transition. This article highlights the most significant changes and offers some practical tips on how charities can start to prepare.

In a previous article ‘The legacy question – What is wrong with accounting for legacies?’, we examined the difficulties of accounting for legacy income under the current accounting framework. Here, Richard Bray suggests approaches to answer the legacy question in the next iteration of the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP).

How do you cope when you are trying to solve a problem that it seems cannot be solved? A boyhood hero of mine was the nineteenth century Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone who spent his later years trying to solve ‘The Irish Question’. There is a satirical quote, ‘every time the English tried to solve the Irish Question the Irish changed the question.’ The question was not answered in his lifetime.

CIPFA and Humentum have now published the third exposure draft (ED3) of the world’s first-ever International Non-Profit Accounting Guidance (INPAG) for Non-Profit Organisations (NPO).

Effective board reports enable informed decision-making and strategic alignment. However, crafting a board report that supports your board’s decision-making requires more than just compiling data and financial results. It demands communicating the report’s purpose clearly, understanding the requirements of the trustees, and anchoring the reports in the charity’s strategic priorities.

2024 is likely to be a turbulent year so the need for charities to communicate what they do, why they do it and the difference they make continues to be important. The trustees’ annual report is a key part of a charity’s suite of communications and effective reporting helps to build trust. So, how can charities tell their story with impact?