CCA’s workshop programme for 2016 is now available through our web site here.
Five new workshops will be run in response to the introduction of the new financial reporting standards for registered charities. Specific workshops for Tier 3 and Tier 4 entities will be run to coincide with financial years ending on 31 March and 30 June, the most common balance dates for not-for-profits. They aim to give organisations the tools to create Financial Statements meeting all the new requirements with the minimum of fuss at the time when this information is needed.
We recommend that registered charities to attend the ‘Wise Tier Choices‘ workshop run in association with the Canterbury Community Law Centre. Over the last year we have become aware of some organisations having received poor advice about what Tier they should report under and the different requirements for each.
All registered Charities will have to produce a Statement of Cash Flows (called ‘Statement of Receipts and Payments’ for Tier 4) in future, a financial statement that many accountants are unfamiliar with as it is not required for taxation purposes and therefore not produced by most business entities. We believe this will be the biggest driver of additional compliance costs for charities, and we have scheduled a workshop to explain it. We will also run a workshop on consolidation of the accounts of several entities, required for some groups under the new rules.
We will re-run our most popular workshops from previous years – Grant Accounting and Understanding Financial Statements – and have brought back a workshop on GST, a fertile area for sometimes quite serious mistakes.
Moving beyond compliance and administration is a new workshop called Financial Management, the first one in the New Year. In not-for-profits, as in businesses, poor financial decision-making and planning as a result of poor understanding of finances is the number 1 cause of operational failure. Yet, decision-makers are often reluctant to wise up on this area. Make it a New Years resolution!