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CHARITY COMMISSION RULES

NFWI have clarified the rules under which WIs have to register with the Charity Commission as we are aware of confusion and differences in advice. The Charity Commission requires charities to register when their gross income exceeds £5,000.

The Charity Commission has now confirmed that a WI is ‘acting as agent’ in collecting and passing on the federation and NFWI shares of the membership subscription. This means that these funds do not belong to the WI and they should not be included in their income or expenditure, i.e. total receipts and total payments, in the WI’s Financial Statement. They should still be recorded in the WI Account Book but reported separately in a note to the Financial Statement.

The current WI Financial Statement and Account Book will be amended to ensure correct accounting treatment of funds received as agent. WIs will then be able to assess whether they have reached the threshold for Charity Commission registration based on the total receipts in their Financial Statement, in line with Charity Commission requirements.

The revised WI Financial Statement will be issued as soon as possible, together with the revised online and hard copy WI Account Book. Meanwhile the income for registration purposes should be calculated manually.

The current Financial Statement and Accounts have now been in use for over two years and the planned revision provides the opportunity to take account of federations’ feedback on any other problems or desirable changes. We would welcome your comments by the end of April if possible.

Please note that a federation is also acting as agent for the NFWI in collecting and paying over the NFWI subscription share. Therefore this should not show as income or expenditure in the federation’s accounts, but should be disclosed in the notes. Federations are advised to discuss this with their own accountants.

Please contact Anne Wheeler at NFWI if you have any questions.

GUIDENCE NOTES FOR WIS APPLYING TO REGISTER FOR THE CHARITY COMMISSION

The NFWI Finance department has provided some guidence notes to help WIs when applying to register for the Charity Commission. Download the notes here.

BUDGET SHEET

A copy of the Budget sheet to go with your Financial Statement is available to download here.

2017 ANNUAL REPORT FORM
A copy of the Annual Report Form is available to download here. Please complete this form and return it to WI House, together with the Financial Statement, Budget and Programme IMMEDIATELY AFTER your Annual Meeting to enable correspondence to be sent to the correct person.

UPDATED WI ACCOUNT BOOK AND FINANCIAL STATEMENT

A copy of the updated online WI Account Book and Financial Statement is now available to download from our Form Downloads page and the Moodle. Updates to the hard copy versions will be available in due course.
If you become aware of any queries or problems, please let the Federation Treasurer know as soon as possible so that they can inform the NFWI.

TREASURERS - HELP WITH COMPLETING YOUR FINANCIAL STATEMENT

Following some queries we have produced a short guide for Treasurers. This should help explain the way the Account Book, which can be downloaded from the WI Moodle, works in relation to completing the Finacial Statement. Click here to download the guide.

FINANCIAL YEAR END

In response to those WIs who are concerned about the timing of their financial year-end...
· The end of your financial year can be whenever your WI agrees it should be.
· If you do decide to alter the year-end date, this can be done by a simple majority of members voting in favour of the change at an ordinary monthly meeting.
· You may choose to run your accounts from 1 January to 31 December, which is a convenient time scale for everyone to relate to and gives the treasurer plenty of time to complete all the paperwork before the May Annual Meeting.
· When considering changing the year-end date do bear in mind that your books should close around 6 weeks before the date of your Annual Meeting to give the treasurer time to finalise the year’s accounts, including receiving the final bank statement, and hand everything to the independent financial examiner giving them plenty of time to complete the examination.

INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL EXAMINERS (IFEs)

All WIs need to have their accounts independently examined at the end of the financial year. Click here for more information on using the WFWI IFE scheme.