Autumn is here (already!) and we know that things are likely to start getting busier for groups now. Many are restarting services that have been paused over the summer holiday period, and are starting to think about festive celebrations. It may seem very early to be reminding you about the end-of-year financial process, but it’s amazing how quickly year end arrives once the festivities are over! We also have some new Finance Volunteers who won’t have experienced the process before. We want to make the process clear and manageable for you, and to provide any support you need.
Meeting the deadline
We need groups to undertake a number of actions in relation to the financial year end, by 31 January 2023. It’s important that we meet this deadline, as we’re required to meet our legal responsibilities and submit accurate financial accounts for audit. Failure to do so could result in us being fined.
We want to make this task as simple as possible. So we’ll be in touch shortly to provide guidance about what needs to be completed for the financial year end, and how we can support you. This will include dates for a series of Zoom support sessions so that we can talk you through the process and answer any questions you have. We’re also working to improve the year-end online system we use, to address the issues that a small number of groups experienced with it last year.
Keeping up to date
To help make the year-end process as manageable as possible for all of us, we’d strongly encourage you to keep up to date with your transactions analysis, using the Branch Accounting Online System. We ask groups to do this on a monthly basis, so that coordinating teams have an accurate overview of their group’s current financial position, and so that we can accurately report on the financial position of the MS Society as a whole.
Dates for the next earmarked money transfers are:
End of October (to include all funds received up until 30 September)
End of December (to include all funds received up until 30 November)
End of February 2023 (to include all funds received up until 31 January 2023)
Please note that if your group has fallen behind with analysing your transactions, any money due to your group will not be transferred.
Support
As we approach the year-end deadline, the number of requests for support we receive increases. As a very small team, we can struggle to respond as quickly as we’d like to. We know how frustrating this is for volunteers who are trying to complete the required actions within the deadlines.
It would therefore be very helpful all round if we can address any issues relating to transactions incurred earlier in the year as soon as possible, prior to the run up to the year end.
Please contact [email protected] as soon as possible if you’re having problems analysing any of your transactions, so we can support you to get up to date and get money due into your group bank account.
