Charity Accounts Excel - Free Template

1. Open the Income & Expenditure sheet and replace the sample organisation name, charity number and reporting-period wording with your own details.
2. Enter the transaction date in DD/MM/YYYY format and describe exactly what the money relates to, such as a donation, grant or venue invoice.
3. Select an appropriate category, then identify the Fund Type as Unrestricted or Restricted. Use the restricted option only where the donor or grant agreement limits how the money may be spent.
4. Enter the receipt in Income (£) or the payment in Expenditure (£), leaving the other amount at zero. Check the Net (£) result against the transaction.
5. Enter any eligible VAT in VAT Reclaimable (£) and add a note showing the invoice, grant condition or other evidence supporting the entry.
6. Review the Dashboard regularly and investigate unusual totals or missing entries before presenting figures to the trustees.
7. Read the Instructions sheet before making structural changes, then save a dated copy after each completed month and keep the source invoices, bank statements and donation records with it.

A volunteer treasurer often opens the workbook after downloading the charity's bank statement, rather than at the end of the financial year. The Income & Expenditure sheet gives you one place to enter receipts and payments while the detail is still fresh. That is particularly useful for a small CIO, community group or unincorporated association without a bookkeeping package.

Image 1 shows the main sheet headed Income & Expenditure. Its nine columns run from Date and Transaction Description through Category, Fund Type, Income (£), Expenditure (£), Net (£), VAT Reclaimable (£) and Notes. The teal header row and pale input areas make the entry fields easy to identify during a monthly bank reconciliation.

Grants need a fund decision

Suppose a youth arts grant brings in £15,000 and the grant letter says it must fund workshops. Enter it as Grants and Restricted, then record workshop costs against the same restricted project. A £2,500 online donation with no condition would normally be Donations and Unrestricted. That distinction helps trustees see whether unrestricted money is available for rent, insurance and administration.

For a charity running four fundraising events, enter ticket receipts and event costs as separate transactions rather than one net figure. A gala with £4,200 of income and £950 of costs then remains visible as both activity and cost, giving trustees a better basis for deciding whether the event is worth repeating.

When the dashboard earns its place

Image 2 shows the Dashboard sheet, which is designed for a quick review rather than detailed entry. Use it before the monthly finance agenda: compare the visual totals with the bank reconciliation and ask why a category or fund has moved sharply.

Image 3 is the Instructions sheet. Give it to a new volunteer treasurer so that categories and fund types are used consistently instead of each person inventing a different description.

The workbook is a management record, not a substitute for the charity's statutory accounts or its underlying evidence. UK charities should retain invoices, receipts, bank statements, grant letters and donation records so that every figure in the spreadsheet can be explained. For a company registered as a charity, accounting records are generally kept for six years; trustees should also follow the retention requirements applying to the charity's own records and funder agreements.

Restricted funds require especially clear evidence. If a funder awards £15,000 for youth arts and the charity spends £9,000, the remaining £6,000 cannot simply be treated as available for general bills. Record the income and related expenditure separately and retain the award letter, because the fund condition is what makes the accounting treatment defensible.

VAT and charitable spending

VAT is not automatically recoverable just because a charity paid it. A VAT-registered charity normally claims input VAT only where the purchase relates to taxable business activities and the invoice is valid. The workbook's VAT Reclaimable (£) column is therefore a review field, not permission to reclaim every amount entered.

The standard VAT rate is 20%, with a 5% reduced rate and zero-rated supplies in specific cases. A £600 gross invoice containing VAT at 20% has £100 VAT and £500 net cost. Enter the amount supported by the invoice and check whether the charity's VAT position permits recovery; do not calculate a claim from a bank payment alone.

Year end and reporting

The tax year from 6 April to 5 April is not the same as a charity's accounting period. This template's sample organisation uses a 31 March year end, so you should set the heading and review period to match your governing document and reporting timetable.

Charities with gross income of £25,000 or more generally submit an annual return to the Charity Commission. Charitable companies also have Companies House obligations. The precise accounts format depends on income, structure and applicable accounting regulations, so use this spreadsheet as an organised transaction base rather than presenting it unchanged as statutory accounts.

The most expensive errors I see are not usually arithmetic mistakes. They are classification failures: a treasurer records a restricted grant as unrestricted, nets an event's income against its costs, or leaves the notes blank so nobody can identify the supporting document six months later.

Restricted money treated as general cash

Imagine a charity receives £20,000 for a three-month food project and spends £14,000. If the £20,000 is entered as unrestricted, the Dashboard may suggest that the charity has £20,000 available for any purpose. Trustees could then approve £4,000 of unrelated expenditure and face a £4,000 funding shortfall when the grant report is prepared.

Use the Fund Type column at the point of entry, not during the year-end scramble. A restricted balance is a responsibility attached to the charity, not simply a helpful label for a chart.

Gross figures disappearing into one line

A fundraising dinner collecting £3,000 and paying £1,200 for catering should not be entered as £1,800 of net income. Doing that hides the scale of the activity and makes the cost ratio impossible to review. It also weakens the audit trail when the bank statement shows two or more separate payments.

Enter the receipt and payment separately, then use the Net (£) column to show the effect. Check that the total income and expenditure agree to the bank movement after allowing for opening and closing balances.

VAT and evidence gaps

A charity may enter £240 in VAT Reclaimable (£) from a £1,440 invoice, but a missing VAT invoice can prevent recovery of that £240. A description such as miscellaneous supplies is also poor evidence when the charity later needs to prove that a cost belonged to a restricted project.

Another common failure is changing a category halfway through the year. If gala costs are called Fundraising Events in April and Events in September, the Dashboard splits the story and trustees lose useful comparisons. Agree a short category list at the start and record the reason for any exception in Notes.

That same short category list becomes easier to keep consistent in a bookkeeping template, where the Notes column can preserve the reason for any exception.

The simplest routine is to attach the workbook to the bank reconciliation. Pick one fixed date each month, download the statement, enter every receipt and payment, then compare the closing total with the bank. A charity with 35 monthly transactions can usually complete this in one focused session; leaving 420 annual entries until March creates a needless reconstruction exercise.

A practical monthly sequence

• Save the bank statement and invoices in a folder named with the month and year.
• Enter transactions in date order and use Notes for the invoice number, grant reference or event name.
• Review restricted entries before the trustee meeting, not after a project has finished.
• Look at the Dashboard for unusual category movements and compare its totals with the bank reconciliation.

Keep the workbook's three-sheet structure intact. The Income & Expenditure sheet is for detailed entries, the Dashboard is for review and the Instructions sheet is useful when a new volunteer takes over. Make a read-only or dated backup after each monthly close rather than overwriting the only copy.

When Excel is no longer enough

This template is a sensible choice while one treasurer controls a manageable transaction list and the charity has straightforward funding. It becomes the wrong tool when several people edit it at once, the charity has many bank accounts, payroll and Gift Aid records, or trustees need a full audit trail with user permissions.

For example, 300 transactions a month means 3,600 rows in a year. At that volume, a cloud bookkeeping system with bank feeds, fund tracking and controlled access is usually safer than relying on emailed copies of the workbook. Keep the spreadsheet as an export or review tool if it remains useful, but do not let it become the only record when reconciliation and version control are becoming difficult.