News

Recent changes to the Charities Legislation have resulted in increased disclosure requirement for Charities when filing of their Annual Financial Accounts with the Charities Commission.

Under the Charity regulations, all registered charities in Northern Ireland must have an external scrutiny of their accounts, namely an audit or, for smaller charities, an independent examination. An independent examination provides an external check on a charity’s accounts. It involves a review of the accounting records kept by the charity, a comparison of the accounts presented with those records and the consideration of any unusual items or disclosures identified. Under the new accounting and reporting regulations, as an independent examiner we must follow the Commission’s Directions when carrying out an independent examination of a registered Charity's accounts.

As part of the new regulations:

• We may have to change and update the format of the accounts that were initially presented to us, to ensure compliance with the Charity legislation;
• We now must vouch items of income and expenditure;
• We must prepare a wages reconciliation to ensure that the wages figure in the accounts matches the wages per the returns;
• We must vouch income and funding applications/documents and investigate any discrepancies.

For further information on the new regulations and how they could effect you contact our Audit, Charities and Regulated Sectors team.