Andrew Buxton Memorial Award 2017

Last Thursday we had a trip out to Women’s Work, Derby to the presentation of the Andrew Buxton Memorial Award 2017. The certificate and cheque were presented by Mrs Janet Buxton.

They won the award for presenting the best-kept set of accounts this year. One might think that this is the sole responsibility of the Finance Officer, but they are only able to do their job well if the rest of the team work with them. Women’s Work Derby are a shining example of how to work as a team, and their award is well deserved.

Balance Sheets

balancing-s Again, it’s nothing to do with acrobatics – but we liked the picture!!

The balance sheet is the second-most-important financial statement that an accounting system produces, after an income statement. A balance sheet reports on a business’s assets, liabilities, and reserves at a particular point in time

The assets shown on a balance sheet are those items that are owned by the business, which have value and for which money was paid
The liabilities shown on a balance sheet are those amounts that a business owes to other people, businesses, and government agencies
Reserves are the amounts that the charity has generated over the lifetime of its existence

As long as you understand what assets and liabilities are, a balance sheet is easy to understand and interpret

Trial Balancing

No, it’s nothing to do with acrobatics!

A trial balance is a useful tool and the essential first step in developing your financial reports.

What is a ‘Trial Balance’?

Basically, a trial balance is a worksheet prepared manually or generated by your computer accounting system that lists all the accounts in your General Ledger at the end of an accounting period (whether that’s at the end of a month, the end of a quarter, or the end of a year).

If you’ve been entering transactions manually, you create a trial balance by listing all the accounts with their ending debit or credit balances. Then, you total the debit and credit columns. If the totals at the bottom of the two columns are the same, the trial is a success, and your books are in balance.

WARNING – A successful trial balance is no guarantee that your books are totally free of errors; it just means that all your transactions have been entered in balance. You still may have errors in the books related to how you entered your transactions

PAYE Forms: P45

The P45 is a certificate which contains earnings and tax payments over the financial tax year up until when an employee leaves a job, and it is issued to employees by the employer. Form P45 shows how much tax has been paid on their salary for the current tax year.

You must give all employees a P45 when they stop working for you. You can either:

use your payroll software, including HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) Basic PAYE Tools
order the forms from HMRC if your payroll software can’t produce them

You can’t download blank P45 forms

Lost P45

You can’t get a replacement P45. Instead, you can use a ‘Starter Checklist’ (link below) or ask your employee for the relevant details about their finances to send to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)

Use this form if you’re an employer and need to record information about a new employee for PAYE

Training Courses Feedback

Our training courses this year have again been very popular.

Cartoon of a man surrounded by icons Here is some feedback from course participants in our recent

Business Planning Course

We hope to resume our training courses early in 2018, so if you would like to be put on the waiting list, or have other financial training needs, please contact us here

What to include in the Trustees’ Annual Report

If your charity’s income is under £500,000 (and providing it doesn’t have assets worth more than £3.26million), prepare a simple report including:

your charity’s name, registration number, address and trustee names
its structure and details of how it is managed, including how it recruits trustees
its activities and objectives in the year
its achievements and performance, including reporting on its public benefit
a financial review including any debts and details of your reserves policy (if applicable)
details of any funds held as a custodian trustee

You can put more detail into your trustees’ annual report if you want to. You only have to send a copy to the commission with your annual return if your income is more than £25,000. But you need to send the commission a copy if it asks for it.

Click here for a template Trustees’ Annual Report for small charities

The Importance of Bank Reconciliation

One of the most important tasks in preparing accounts for Independent Examination is Bank Reconciliation

A Bank Reconciliation is used to compare your records to those of your bank, to see if there are any differences between these two sets of records for your cash transactions. The ending balance of your version of the cash records is known as the book balance, while the bank’s version is called the bank balance. A monthly reconciliation helps you identify any unusual transactions that might be caused by accounting errors or fraud.

Our training manual “The Adventures of Mr Claw in the World of Charity Accounting” explains Bank Reconciliation and Statement production, and how to implement these procedures in to your organisation’s accounting procedures. Get your copy here

The Andrew Buxton Memorial Award 2017

We are pleased to announce that the winners of this year’s Andrew Buxton Memorial Award are Women’s Work, Derby.

Many congratulations to the whole team there on producing such a great set of accounts this year.

Mrs Janet Buxton will be presenting the award later in September.

Sick Leave and Holidays

Sick leave and holiday

Statutory holiday sickness entitlement is built up (accrued) while an employee is off work sick (no matter how long they’re off).

Any statutory holiday entitlement that isn’t used because of illness can be carried over into the next leave year. If an employee is ill just before or during their holiday, they can take it as sick leave instead.

An employee can ask to take their paid holiday for the time they’re off work sick. They might do this if they don’t qualify for sick pay, for example. Any rules relating to sick leave will still apply.

Employers can’t force employees to take annual leave when they’re eligible for sick leave.

Pay

When an employee changes their holiday to sick leave they’re paid Statutory Sick Pay which will count towards the amount of holiday pay they’ve received. The exceptions to this rule are:

they don’t qualify for Statutory Sick Pay
they were off work sick and being paid ‘occupational sick pay’