Details of our services for charities

There are 165,000 charities in the UK. Of these, 154,000 have a turnover of under £500,001 and only 2,110 or 1.3% have an income of greater than £5m. (Source: December 2015 Charity Commission).

So, most are not going to have a full time and experienced Finance Director. And yet, the Trustees have and must accept ultimate responsibility for directing the affairs of a charity, and ensuring that it is solvent, well-run, and delivering the charitable outcomes for the benefit of the public for which it has been set up.

Having worked in the sector for the last 15 years, I am keen to leverage my FD skills without burdening charities with excessive cost.

Charities operate within a financial and governance environment and there are four key controls that charities need to ensure are operating effectively. The four financial controls are:

• Financial management
• Risk assessment
• Internal control
• Auditing

Financial management covers the annual finance cycle:

In smaller charities, there is often an office administrator who carries out a lot of the accounting functions. With the right guidance from an experienced FD, they can complete 95% of the activities within the finance cycle with the balance coming from the part-time FD to provide assurances to Trustees that their charity has strong financial management.

Completing a financial risk assessment is essential to ensure that there is good governance. Are there good written policies and procedures? Is there segregation of duties for making payments? Have you recently updated your risk register?

In smaller organisations, internal controls can be seen as bureaucratic and unnecessary. Whilst this may well be true if one tries to apply the internal controls of a large business to a small charity, the key is to make the internal controls relevant and appropriate to the size and complexity of the organisation.

Whilst there is a growing trend to reduce the external audit requirements of business in general, there are still a far higher proportion of charities that have an audit than general SMEs. This can be an expensive cost to the charity and may not be providing the Trustees with the assurances that they need. 

With many years’ experience of the auditing profession, I have helped reduce costs and worked with auditors to provide valued added services to the charity and its Trustees.

If you would like a confidential discussion about how I can help improve your financial controls, please get in touch with me.