Attention Charities - Is Your Annual Submission Deadline Coming Up?

19th October 2022

Every year, every registered charity in Scotland must send OSCR a set of accounts, a trustees' annual report and an external scrutiny report.

OSCR requires this information within 9 months of a charity's ‘year-end'. For example, when a charity has a financial year-end of 31 March its deadline date is 31 December. A significant number of charities have a deadline between December and January. It is clearly marked on a charity's entry in the Scottish Charity Register if they have missed their deadline.

Charities submit this information by completing an online annual return using OSCR Online. OSCR Online was upgraded on 25 July 2022, and the principal contact for a charity received new log in information around this date. When the principal contact accesses the upgraded system, they can add an additional two users who also have the ability to submit a charity's online annual return.
See Here - https://www.oscr.org.uk/news/how-to-submit-your-annual-return-to-oscr/

What happens if my charity is late?

In addition to displaying this information on their entry in the Scottish Charity Register, if a charity does not provide us with the required information the following could apply:

under section 45 of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, we can appoint an accountant to prepare the accounts at the trustees' expense

charities who submit their accounts after their deadline may experience difficulties in obtaining external funding, as many funders use the information on the register to inform their funding decisions

charities may not be able to access other benefits of charitable status, such as exemption from water rates.

Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator web site www.oscr.org.uk/