Funders rarely want accounts. They want to see that their money went where the bid said it would go, on the dates the agreement set. Read the schedule at the back of your grant agreement before you build anything. It will tell you the reporting periods, usually quarterly or six-monthly, the deadline after each period end, and whether anyone has to sign the report off.

What a typical spend report contains

• The budget headings from your bid, in the same order and with the same names.
• Spend in the period and spend to date against each heading.
• The balance remaining on each heading, and on the grant as a whole.
• A short written note on any heading that is materially over or under budget.
• A forecast of spend to the end of the grant period.

Larger funders, including National Lottery programmes and Welsh Government schemes administered through local partners, often add a cashflow forecast, confirmation that match funding has landed, and a count of beneficiaries reached. Some ask for sample evidence: a payroll report for the staff time charged, or invoices above a stated value.

Write the variance notes yourself

The numbers take an afternoon once the bookkeeping is clean. The variance notes are what the grants officer reads. If you underspent on sessional staff because a delivery partner pulled out in month two, say that, say what you are doing about it, and say where the money will now go. Funders accept that projects move. They dislike finding out at the end.

Set a reminder two weeks before each reporting deadline, and work backwards from it.

Most reporting pain comes from one bank account holding three funders’ money plus your trading income. Separate it in the bookkeeping rather than in separate bank accounts, which get messy fast.

One code per grant

In Xero or any cloud system, set up tracking categories with one option per grant and one for unrestricted activity. Every transaction gets coded as it is entered. Then the spend report is a report you run, and the balance left on each grant is a figure you can quote on a phone call rather than rebuild from scratch.

Build the chart of accounts around the bid

If your bid said staff costs, venue hire, materials, training and overheads, make those your expense headings. Reporting then stops being a translation exercise. When a new grant arrives with different headings, map the new lines to the existing ones once, in writing, and keep the mapping with the file.

Split staff time properly

Where a project worker is funded sixty per cent by one grant and forty per cent by another, split each payroll run in the same proportions and keep the timesheets that support it. This is the single thing funders query most, and it is also the thing that is impossible to reconstruct a year later.

Income follows spend

Restricted grant income is recognised as the related costs are incurred. A grant that lands in March for a project running to the following December does not all belong in the year it arrived. The unspent part is carried forward as deferred income and shown in the balance sheet. Get this right and your accounts agree with your spend reports; get it wrong and your surplus looks far larger than it is.

If your books are behind, fix the coding for the current year first, then work backwards.

Every community interest company has one filing obligation that ordinary limited companies do not. Alongside the annual accounts, the directors prepare a community interest company report on form CIC34 and file it with those accounts. It goes on the public register, where funders, councils and anyone else can read it.

The report exists so the Regulator of Community Interest Companies can see that the company is still doing what it was set up to do and that it is talking to the people it serves. It is required even in a year when the CIC traded nothing at all.

Simplified or detailed

There are two versions of the form. Most CICs complete the simplified report. The detailed version is for companies with more involved financial arrangements, including those that have paid performance related interest on a debt or debenture, and companies limited by shares that have declared or proposed a dividend in the year or in any of the four years before it. If you are filling in the detailed version, take advice on the financial sections before you sign it.

What the directors have to write

• The activities carried on in the year and the benefit those activities delivered to the community.
• How stakeholders were consulted, and what changed as a result.
• Directors’ remuneration, which is public for a CIC.
• Any transfer of assets for less than market value, and who received it.

The Regulator wants detail, and so does a grants officer reading your file. A CIC34 that says “we ran workshops” tells nobody anything. Numbers of sessions, numbers of people, the wards or towns covered, and what the stakeholder consultation changed: that is the version worth writing, and it doubles as material for your next bid.

Draft it while the year is fresh, not the week the accounts are due.

The filing route for a CIC is narrower than for other small companies, and this catches directors out every year.

The rules as they stand

• The directors must approve the accounts before anything is filed.
• CIC accounts cannot be filed through WebFiling. Companies House confirmed this in guidance in April 2026.
• The usual route is the Companies House service for filing a CIC report and accounts, or iXBRL package accounts prepared in commercial software and submitted as a ZIP file.
• You need your company number and your authentication code, and there is a filing fee paid by card.
• Amended CIC accounts cannot be filed online or through software. They go to Companies House on paper.
• From 1 April 2028, all companies must file accounts using commercial software, whether the directors file themselves or an agent files for them. Paper and the remaining digital services go.

Deadlines and penalties

A private company files its accounts within nine months of the year end, and the corporation tax return goes to HMRC on a different clock. Companies House issues automatic late filing penalties, and they increase the longer the accounts are outstanding. For a funded organisation the bigger cost is reputational: a late filing marker sits on the public record where your next funder will see it.

The CIC34 is filed with the accounts, so a late set of accounts means a late community interest report as well. If your year end has just passed and nothing has started, book the work in now rather than in month eight. See the current rules on the Companies House pages before you file.

Grant rounds open and close on their own timetable, and almost every application asks for your most recent signed accounts. If your year ended in March and your accounts are filed in December, you spend nine months handing funders a set of numbers that describes a year you have moved on from.

Close the year within weeks, not months

If the bookkeeping has been coded monthly through the year, a CIC year end is a short job. We aim to have accounts and the CIC34 drafted shortly after the year end so there is a current set on file whenever a round opens. That timing is a decision, and it is worth making deliberately.

Keep a standing bid pack

Most funders ask for the same documents. Keep one folder with the latest signed accounts, the filed CIC34, a current budget, a forecast for the next twelve months, your reserves position, and your governing document. When a round opens with a three week window, you spend that time writing the case, not chasing paperwork.

Numbers that help the application

Funders look at whether you can absorb their money and keep running. A simple forecast showing income by source, the cost of delivery, and what happens when the current grant ends answers the question before they ask it. Where a CIC is limited by shares, remember the dividend cap built into the model: at least sixty five per cent of surplus profit stays with the community purpose.

We introduce CIC clients to a fundraising consultant who helps find the next grant, so the numbers and the bid get written side by side. Decide now which round you are going for, and work back to the date the accounts need to be signed.