The Charity Commission has published updated guidance on the accounts charities in England and Wales must prepare, reflecting two changes arriving together: the revised Charities SORP, which applies to financial years starting on or after 1 January 2026, and higher income thresholds for financial years ending on or after 30 September 2026.
- Accruals accounts: required above £500,000 income, up from £250,000
- Independent examination: required above £40,000 income, up from £25,000
- Audit: required above £1.5m gross income, or above £500,000 with gross assets over £5m, up from £1m
For many smaller charities that is a welcome reduction in cost and paperwork. For larger ones, the bigger change is SORP 2026 itself, which introduces new requirements for recognising and reporting certain types of income and lease arrangements, and more transparency from higher-income charities.
Charity trustees have stewardship of around £100 billion of charitable money and people want to see how those funds are being spent to do good. — Amie Woods, Charity Commission
Where this reaches the website and CRM
Accounting standards are written for finance teams, but the data they rely on is usually captured somewhere else: on a donation form, in an events booking, through a grant portal or in a supporter CRM. If income arrives without the detail needed to classify it, someone ends up doing that classification by hand at year end.
- Is each income type, such as donations, grants, legacies, trading and event income, captured as its own category at source?
- Are restrictions attached to a gift recorded when it is made, not reconstructed afterwards?
- Can finance produce the figures they need from the systems directly, without a reconciliation spreadsheet?
If the answer to any of those is no, the new SORP is a good reason to fix it. The cheapest time to classify income correctly is the moment it comes in.
