Community group - audited accounts

borders_dude

A community group I help out with every so often needs to provide audited accounts for the last financial year for a small grant they have put in for.

Does this just need to be a simple A4 page with a column for income and one for expenditure?

Including the bank balance at the start of the period?

Who audits them? Just the treasurer?

I should say the group had no income and no expenditure during the last financial year so that should make things a bit more simple. They have £300 in the bank thats been there for a couple of years which hasnt been touched so thats their only balance.

mizzbiz

It is a chartered accountant that would provide audited accounts. Probably cost their bank balance to get this done though :-(

Would the people issiuing the grant be prepared to accept ordinary accounts under the circumstances? Companies House only demand audited accounts for companies with a turnover of £100,000 or more, so it seems unfair to request them from a small community group with no income at all!

paddyrg

The grant form is probably just a one-size-fits-all one, point out the situation, maybe even offer a bank statement, they will probably see sense!

theesel1994

mizzbiz wrote: »

It is a chartered accountant that would provide audited accounts. Probably cost their bank balance to get this done though :-(

Would the people issiuing the grant be prepared to accept ordinary accounts under the circumstances? Companies House only demand audited accounts for companies with a turnover of £100,000 or more, so it seems unfair to request them from a small community group with no income at all!

From April 2008 this figure is £6.5million (or a balance sheet total of no more than £3.26million).

Savvy_Sue

But we are not talking about a ltd co, we are talking about a small community group.

Probably best to ring the grant-making body and ask exactly what is required under these circumstances. Hopefully you will need no more than a friendly professional 'examining' the accounts and confirming that they have done so.

Poppy9

If the grant is coming from a Local Authority and is under £10k then a simple "statement of expenditure" maybe acceptable and the LA may even send you the template to complete. If the grant is coming from EU money then the demands maybe higher as they are far stricter with the conditions of the grant. Note that some LA adminster EU grants so that may mean you have to comply with LA rules.

You need to contact the grantor to find out exactly what they require. For a grant of a few hundred pounds I doubt they expect much.

theesel1994

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

But we are not talking about a ltd co, we are talking about a small community group.

They were making a comparison with a ltd co.

Savvy_Sue

theesel1994 wrote: »

They were making a comparison with a ltd co.

I think what I was trying to get across was that while you'd need to use someone with a particular set of letters after their name for a ltd co, in this situation you probably aren't limited to that set of letters, or possibly any set of letters. You may need no more than a letter from the Community Group explaining why there had been no transactions on the account, counter-signed by someone independent confirming that's the case.

However, the only people to confirm or deny this will be the grant giver, as various people have already said.

Presumably the grant application explains why the group now needs / wants a cash injection.

theesel1994

I think what I was trying to get across is the misconception that a chartered accountant is required by a limited company for their final accounts. Something I thought up until a couple of years ago. I now realise that a chartered accountant isn't required until the turnover reaches £6.5million as mentioned above. Having said that, if I had a company that was making £6million I think I'd be using a chartered accountant anyway. And what has my post got to do with the subject of the thread? Absolutely nothing. I'll get me coat.

Savvy_Sue

theesel1994 wrote: »

And what has my post got to do with the subject of the thread? Absolutely nothing. I'll get me coat.

:rotfl: I think we were both heading off down interesting byways.

Hopefully the OP has spoken to the grant body and got some useful information.

bris

The problem is, the OP is looking for a grant, the organisation that will give this will not accept any old set of accounts and will need an audited set to make sure no one is cooking the books to get it. They very well may need a chartered accountant to do this, expensive, so they need to decide if the grant is worth the fee. They could then spend this money and still be refused, so a gamble all round.
Op, you can at least get a free quote from a couple of accountants in your area, so start with that.