What is the Purpose of an AGM?

What is the purpose of an AGM?

The aim of the AGM is to provide the charity trustees and/or officers the opportunity to explain their management of the charity to the members. It also provides the members of the charity with an opportunity to ask questions before voting on business items on the agenda.

A charity’s AGM is held once a year and members of the charity can attend and vote. The governing document will state when it must be held. This may be in a particular month or within a certain period after the end of the financial year.

The business that must be considered by the AGM will usually be specified in the governing document or by underlying legislation. However, the charity trustees can include any other additional items of business they feel appropriate.

If you need help in drawing up the Agenda, please see follow this link

Statutory Sick Pay – Linked Periods of Sickness

Statutory Sick Pay

Linked Periods of Sickness

If you or an employee have regular periods of sickness, they may count as ‘linked’ To be linked, the periods must:

qualify for SSP by lasting 4 or more days each
be 8 weeks or less apart

You’re no longer eligible for SSP if you have a continuous series of linked periods that lasts more than 3 years.

For more detailed information about eligibility click here

Training Courses

Business Planning Course

Thanks to all those who attended last week’s course, and many thanks to Margaret for organising the catering for the day. This was much appreciated by all!

This is a very popular course, and will definately be repeated, so keep watching for new dates.

The recent cuts to funding may well mean that there will be a reduction in our training opportunities – more details later

Professional Help from ProHelp

Need professional help? …..

ProHelp may be the answer

ProHelp is a group of professionals firms who have formed to provide free professional services to community based, not-for-profit social enterprises working for the social regeneration of your local area.

The professional firms undertake one-off projects, which could include outline building plans and costings, property valuations, structural surveys, the development of PR & marketing strategies and business plans, legal and accountancy advice and business mentoring.

If you are taking on property, wanting to extend or renovate an existing building, employing staff, losing staff, negotiating new contract agreements, developing a business plan or marketing strategy, setting up a new organisation, wanting to develop an existing one, struggling with financial forecasting or needing help with brand identity? …. perhaps ProHelp can assist you?

Please contact Ann Hilton at Business in the Community at ann.hilton@bitc.org.uk or call on 0115 9247408

Eligibility for Statutory Maternity Leave and Pay

The Government Website has very clear information to guide you through this process. Just follow the underlined links below for more details.

Statutory Maternity Leave

You qualify for Statutory Maternity Leave if:

you’re an employee not a ‘worker’
you give your employer the correct notice

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been with your employer, how many hours you work or how much you get paid.

Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP)

To qualify for SMP you must:

earn on average at least £112 a week
give the correct notice
give proof you’re pregnant
have worked for your employer continuously for at least 26 weeks up to the ‘qualifying week’ – the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth

Work out your qualifying week using the maternity pay calculator.

To download a PDF of the document, click here

The Andrew Buxton Memorial Award

The Andrew Buxton Memorial Award

As many of you will be aware, Andrew Buxton was the chair of our trustees until his untimely death.

In his honour, a special award is to be presented to the group which presents the best-kept set of accounts this year. We will be judging the entries next month, so if you have not yet had your accounts looked at by us this year, then you can read some Top Tips for presenting your accounts in our current newsletter

Very Much Open For Business

It has come to our attention that a rumour is circulating concerning the closure of Derby Community Accountancy Service

THAT RUMOUR IS TOTALLY UNTRUE

The truth is that DCAS is very much open for business, and continues to be here to serve you in the Charity and Voluntary Sector in Derby and surrounding area

Derby City Council Funding Cuts

What is happening?

In March 2016, Derby City Council (DCC) announced that it would no longer be funding the Voluntary Sector Organisations in Derby City.

What effect will this have?

This has huge financial implications for all charities in the city, and Derby Community Accountancy Service (DCAS) is no exception, as we also have lost our Support Grant from Derby City Council

What about DCAS?

For infrastructure organisations such as ourselves, grant funding to make up the loss of funding from DCC is not readily available.

Unlike a commercial accountancy company, we cannot use the profits that we make on the work that we do with commercial businesses to support our charity work, because ALL of our work is with charitable organisations.

We are actually at a commercial disadvantage to the private sector companies, because of all the charitable work that we do FREE OF CHARGE – this includes the training courses that we provide, and the one-to-one support that we give to charitable organisations.

How will this affect our service users?

Unfortunately, this means that we will have to raise tha charges that we make for our Independent Examination Services of between £50-£100 – this will still be far cheaper than any alternative commercial accountancy service

Will any services stop?

NO! – and we will still be able to provide the free training courses and individual sessions that we have made available to you all over the years.

Thank you all

Although we may no longer have the support of Derby City Council, we are proud to say that we still have the support of you all in the Voluntary Sector. We greatly appreciate and admire all the work that you do for the people of this city, and we will do everything in our power to continue to support you.

Understanding W1 or M1 Tax Codes

If your employee’s tax code has ‘W1’ or ‘M1’ at the end

W1 (week 1) and M1 (month 1) are emergency tax codes and appear at the end of an employee’s tax code, eg ‘577L W1’ or ‘577L M1’. Calculate your employee’s tax only on what they are paid in the current pay period, not the whole year.

Updating for the new tax year

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will tell you between January and March about any new tax codes to use for employees in the new tax year. This starts on 6 April.

If an employee’s tax code isn’t changing, HMRC won’t contact you and you should carry forward the employee’s tax code to the new tax year.

If your employee’s tax code ends with ‘M1’ or ‘W1’ (‘month 1’ or ‘week 1’), don’t carry this part of the code into the new tax year.

Click here for more information