Charity Accounts Excel - Free Template

The sheet named Income & Expenditure is used here as a simple cash working record: enter actual receipts and payments for one defined period. It does not include accruals, a statement of assets and liabilities, a complete statement of financial activities or the disclosures needed for statutory accounts.

Before using the figures for annual reporting, establish the accounting basis and format required for your charity’s legal form and regulator. The Charity Commission’s CC16 receipts and payments template applies to England and Wales and includes more than a transaction list. This download is not a substitute for that complete reporting package.

Use rows 4–13 for the date, description, category, fund type, income and expenditure. Enter zero in the unused amount column. If an event line includes both receipts and payments, retain a supporting breakdown and keep the two figures separate; entering only a net event surplus would hide the gross activity.

Totals exclude flagged entries. The dashboard keeps closing cash blank until the flagged rows are resolved, so a missing amount cannot quietly produce a complete-looking closing figure. Keep the receipts, bank references and other evidence behind every line.

Enter opening restricted cash in Dashboard!E13 and opening unrestricted cash in E14. Each closing figure is opening cash plus that group’s receipts minus its payments. The combined closing cash is the sum of those two figures.

The fictional restricted example starts with £10,000, receives £23,000 and pays £3,200, giving £29,800 closing cash. That arithmetic does not establish that all payments satisfy the donor’s conditions; the supporting fund records still need review.

This file groups all restricted activity together. It does not track each individual restricted fund, endowment or transfer between funds. The Charity Commission’s internal financial controls guidance explains the need for accounts to reflect separate restricted and endowment funds. Keep that detailed ledger alongside this summary.

A trustee designation of unrestricted money is different from a restriction attached to donated funds. Also, cash held is not automatically free reserves. Consult the Commission’s reserves guidance when preparing a reserves figure or policy.

The earlier automatic “VAT reclaimable” calculation has been removed. An Office Costs category does not establish whether VAT was charged or whether any recovery is available. Column H is now a manual amount for review and does not affect the cash movement or calculate a claim.

This compact version has ten entry rows. To add more, extend the transaction area and every dependent total, category summary, fund summary, validation and dashboard reference together. Do not overwrite the totals on row 14 or the summaries below them.

Before handing figures to the treasurer, examiner or accountant, resolve entry flags, reconcile cash with the underlying records, confirm each fund’s opening position and retain the supporting breakdowns. For a committee-level narrative accompanying the figures, see the club treasurer report template.