Enaid Accountancy

Enaid Accountancy We are Enaid Accountancy. The financial experts for charities and third sector entities across the UK.

We’re committed to enabling a better financial future for charity and third sector entities across the UK.

Your rented office just became a balance sheet item.Under SORP 2026, charities now have to recognise most operating leas...
01/06/2026

Your rented office just became a balance sheet item.

Under SORP 2026, charities now have to recognise most operating leases on the balance sheet, both as an asset (the right to use it) and a liability (the future lease payments). For most charities, the office or premises lease is the big one. This is one of the most significant practical changes in the new framework.

Three things trustees need to think about.

1. Your balance sheet is going to look different. Reported assets and liabilities will both increase. The total picture isn't worse, but your fixed assets will appear larger. Funders and lenders looking at your accounts need context for that change.
2. Existing borrowing covenants might be affected. If you have a loan or financial arrangement with covenants tied to your asset base or debt levels, the new lease treatment could push you offside even though nothing has actually changed in your operations. Check this before year-end, not after.
3. You need a complete list of your leases. Property, equipment, vehicles, anything that's leased. Each one needs to be reviewed against the new rules. Short-term leases (under 12 months) and low-value leases may be exempt, but you need the full inventory before you can apply the exemptions.

The work to do this well takes time. Charities that wait until year-end will find themselves making rushed judgments with limited room to plan.

If you want a structured walk-through of what your charity's lease position looks like under the new rules, we can help.

The biggest change to charity reporting in over a decade just landed.If your charity has an accounting period starting o...
29/05/2026

The biggest change to charity reporting in over a decade just landed.
If your charity has an accounting period starting on or after 1 January 2026, you're now reporting under SORP 2026. Here's what trustees actually need to know.

The new SORP introduces three tiers based on gross income.

Tier 1: charities under £500,000. Lowest level reporting. Less narrative. Fewer disclosures.
Tier 2: charities between £500,000 and £15 million. Mid-level requirements.
Tier 3: charities over £15 million. The most detailed reporting and transparency.

Worth being clear about one thing. Those lighter Tier 1 requirements are relative to the larger tiers, not relative to the old rules. Being in Tier 1 does not mean less reporting than you did before. For many smaller charities, the requirements are broadly similar, and in some areas they have gone up.

The bar has moved. Trustees' annual reports now need to do more on impact, reserves policy, sustainability and risk. The narrative has to link clearly to the numbers. That applies across all three tiers.

For most charities, your first set of SORP 2026 accounts is already in motion. The work to prepare doesn't start when the year ends. It starts now.
Three things to do this week:

Identify which tier your charity falls into.

Talk to your auditor or independent examiner about what changes for you.
Map your current trustees' annual report against the new requirements.

If you'd like a clear view of what this means for your charity specifically, get in touch.
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Enaid has moved. New address: Platform 10, Engine Room, Hood Road, Barry, CF62 5QL.The move isn't really about premises....
27/05/2026

Enaid has moved. New address: Platform 10, Engine Room, Hood Road, Barry, CF62 5QL.

The move isn't really about premises. It reflects a shift in where we put our time.

Most of the conversations we have with charity leaders come back to confidence. Trustees who want to understand what they're approving. Finance leads who want to do more than close the month. CEOs who want to make sharper decisions with the numbers in front of them.

Compliance work isn't going anywhere. But the work we want to do more of is enabling charity teams and boards to feel in control of their own finances, rather than relying on us to interpret them after the fact.

The new space is built for that, with a dedicated area for training and workshops on charity reporting, reserves, restricted funds and governance.

For clients, the day-to-day is unchanged. What's new is what you can now ask us for.

Read the full story on the blog. If you'd like to talk about training for your team or board, get in touch.

https://www.enaidaccountancy.co.uk/company-news/weve-moved-enaids-new-office-in-barry/

About a third of UK charities are now using AI in their day-to-day work. Most are using it to rework drafts, simplify co...
25/05/2026

About a third of UK charities are now using AI in their day-to-day work. Most are using it to rework drafts, simplify complex ideas, or tailor funding bids.

That's useful. But there's a financial governance side that hasn't caught up.

Where AI is helping charities right now:

• Drafting communications and updating policies
• Summarising long documents and meeting transcripts
• First-draft funding bid writing
• Translating internal text into plain English

Where it's quietly creating risk:

• Beneficiary data being pasted into public AI tools
• Donor information leaving your secure environment
• Financial records being uploaded to systems that train on them
• Decisions being treated as 'reviewed' when they were just AI-generated

The Charity Commission has published guidance on Charities and Artificial Intelligence, and the new Charity Governance Code references it directly. Trustees are now expected to know what tools their staff are using and what data is going into them.

Three questions worth asking at your next board meeting.

1. Do we have an AI use policy, even a one-page one?
2. Has anyone uploaded personal data, donor records, or financial information into a public AI tool in the last six months?
3. Where AI has produced output that informed a decision, has a human signed off on it?

AI can lift capacity in a small charity's finance team. The value disappears the moment it creates a data breach or a regulatory issue.

If you'd like help drafting an AI use policy that fits a charity context, get in touch.

Most trustees who get caught up in a conflict of interest didn't know they were in one.That's the finding from the Chari...
22/05/2026

Most trustees who get caught up in a conflict of interest didn't know they were in one.

That's the finding from the Charity Commission's updated CC29 guidance, published this April. And it explains why cases involving alleged abuse of charitable status for private benefit have risen by 23% in a single year.

There are two types of conflict every trustee needs to know about.

Financial: when a trustee, or someone connected to them, stands to gain money or other value from a decision the board is making.

Loyalty: when a trustee's obligations to another person or organisation could influence their judgement, even where no money is changing hands.

The second type catches more boards out. A trustee who also volunteers with a partner organisation, or whose family member runs a supplier, often won't see the conflict until it's flagged externally.

Here's the part trustees most often miss.

A decision made without properly managing a conflict can be legally invalid. If that decision results in a loss to the charity, trustees can be deemed jointly liable to cover the loss from their own money. The Commission may also treat it as evidence of misconduct or mismanagement.

This isn't theoretical. The case volume is rising and the regulator has been clear it's looking more closely.

Three practical steps for any board:

1. Refresh your conflicts register annually, not just when someone joins.
2. Make declaration of interests a standing item at every board and committee meeting.
3. Document how each conflict was managed, not just that it was disclosed.

If your board's conflicts process hasn't been reviewed in the last twelve months, it's worth a fresh look. Speak to the team if you'd like a hand.

Payroll sounds straightforward until it isn't.For small charities running lean, payroll errors are common and often go u...
18/05/2026

Payroll sounds straightforward until it isn't.

For small charities running lean, payroll errors are common and often go unnoticed until they create a compliance problem.

A few things that catch charities out:

Auto-enrolment duties. Every employer, regardless of size, has obligations under automatic enrolment for workplace pensions. Missing contribution deadlines or failing to re-enrol eligible staff at the three-year point can trigger fines.

Staff on variable hours. If your charity uses sessional workers, relief staff, or casual contracts, calculating National Insurance and pension contributions correctly requires careful attention to thresholds.

Salary sacrifice arrangements. These can reduce your NI liability as an employer, but they need to be set up correctly to be valid.

Paying volunteers. Reimbursing volunteers for genuine out-of-pocket expenses is fine. Paying flat-rate amounts not tied to actual costs can inadvertently create an employment relationship and a payroll liability.

Getting payroll right isn't just about compliance. It's about your staff trusting that they're being paid correctly and that their employer is running things properly.

We provide payroll support built around the needs of small and medium charities.

Get in touch.

Year-end shouldn't feel like a scramble. For most charities, it does.The reason is usually the same: the accounts are be...
15/05/2026

Year-end shouldn't feel like a scramble. For most charities, it does.

The reason is usually the same: the accounts are being prepared reactively, from records that weren't maintained with year-end in mind.

The good news is that most year-end problems are preventable if you start preparing three months out.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

Reconcile your fund balances now. Don't wait until your auditor asks for them.
Make sure all restricted income has been correctly coded against the right fund throughout the year.
Review any grants received this year. Are you confident the income has been recognised correctly under the Charities SORP?
Check that your fixed asset register is up to date, including any assets purchased or disposed of in the year.
Prepare a draft narrative for your Trustees' Annual Report before the numbers are finalised; it's easier to write it while the year is still fresh.

Getting ahead of these steps doesn't just make year-end easier. It gives you a cleaner picture of your financial position in time to act on it.

We work with charities through year-end preparation and accounts production. Get in touch to find out how we can help.

Restricted fund management is one of the most misunderstood areas of charity finance.Not because trustees and finance le...
13/05/2026

Restricted fund management is one of the most misunderstood areas of charity finance.

Not because trustees and finance leads do not care. Because the problems build quietly.

Vague funding terms that never get pinned down. Tracking that runs on spreadsheets across multiple grants. Internal transfers to manage cash flow that never quite get corrected. Growth plans that rely on restricted income without a clear path to building core funding.

None of these is a crisis on its own. Together, they create audit exposure, governance risk, and real financial instability.

If any of that sounds familiar, the latest article on the Enaid blog is a good starting point. Six specific mistakes, what causes them, and what good fund management actually looks like.

https://www.enaidaccountancy.co.uk/uncategorised/restricted-vs-unrestricted-funds-charity-mistakes/

A charity can show a healthy surplus in its annual accounts and run out of cash within 90 days.This is not a hypothetica...
11/05/2026

A charity can show a healthy surplus in its annual accounts and run out of cash within 90 days.

This is not a hypothetical. It happens regularly, and it catches boards off guard because they're looking at the wrong numbers.

Annual accounts show what happened over 12 months. Cash flow shows what is happening right now and what will happen over the next quarter.

For charities, the gap between surplus and cash is often driven by:

Grant income received in one period but restricted to activity in the next.
Restricted funds sitting in your bank account that legally cannot be spent on your running costs.
Late payments from statutory commissioners.
Large payments due — payroll, rent, audit fees — that fall in a short window.

We help charities build cash flow processes that work at the board level.

Speak to the team.

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