Tier 4, the reporting rules for most registered charities, has changed, and a new format is replacing the previous rules from 31 March 2024 at the latest.
Many societies, that are not registered charities, and are re-registering under the new Societies Act 2021 will also have to comply with this format.
Tier 4 entities produce financial statements (‘performance report’) mostly on a ‘cash-basis’, that used to be called ‘Statement of Receipts and Payments’ and ‘Statement of Resources and Commitments’.
The new rules make the usage of a new template more or less mandatory, and have further simplified the information that it needs to contain. As part of these changes the previous ‘Statement of Resources and Commitments’, i.e. a report on your assets and liabilities, has been abolished, and replaced by some very basic disclosures in the Notes.
At CCA we think that this is no longer a meaningful financial report, and some information that we believe is essential to a proper understanding of the organisation is no longer mandatory. This especially affects how grants and similar advance income is reported – carried-over amounts no longer have to be included in the report, which has the potential to substantially distort the picture a reader of the report would be getting.
CCA is responding to these changes in a number of ways:
Workshops
We will put on some workshops in 2024 to guide you through filling in this new Tier 4 form by yourself. The idea is to make reporting as cheap and simple for you as possible.
Compliance Check
We cannot audit or review the new Tier 4 reports, they are too basic to attest a ‘true and fair view’ to them. But, if you did your own Tier 4 report, we can go over it and check if it meets the requirements.
CCA ‘Financial Management Reports’
We think organisations deserve a more meaningful financial report at least once a year than the new ‘Tier 4’ can provide. We can put this together as part of generating the Tier 4 report for you, so you will have a better, more understandable and a little more detailed financial report for your own decision-making and your stakeholders, such as funders.