January over – February here we come ……

Already the end of January 2010 – first month of the new decade or last January of the old one? We take the latter view and are winding up to celebrate the new decade on 1 January 2011 – by when we will have been trading for 16 years.

And a busy month it has been too with visits to undertake two health checks – reports to follow – for the Quaker Housing Trust (www.qht.org.uk) in Windemere (Gatesbield Quaker Housing Association) and Poole, Dorset (Routes to Roots (http://www.routestoroots.org) plus our continuing work for Aid to the Church in Need, Croners (Management of voluntary Organisations), Target Ovarian Cancer and London Cycling Campaign.

And February promises to be equally busy as we plough our not for profit sector furrow ready for spring growth.

Start of Christmas

OK – that’s it!

Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is on the i-player so off we go until after Boxing day.

With warm wishes for the Christmas season and for a prosperous 2010 to all our clients, partners and suppliers.

Drucker anniversary

I read and then met Peter Drucker – who died in 2005 at the age of 95 – while doing my MBA at London Business School. So this year is the anniversary of his death and Drucker Societies are celebrating his life.

From what has remained with me from Drucker, at the forefront in his simple five most important questions you will ever ask to keep you purpose driven, which are;
• What is our business or mission?
• Who is our customer (or client, beneficiary)
• What does the customer value?
• What are our plans?
• What are our results?

And, more or less, those are the questions I still ask myself looking at our business, and the activities of our clients most days of the working week

VAT Rate back up

We hope all our readers know that the standard rate of VAT goes back up to 17.5% as on 1.1.2010?

Always willing to help organisations with this.

And would be interested to know if any with VAT as a net cost taking the opportunity to save 2.5% off the top by bringing purchases forward, given balances are earning less than this?

Legal update – CPD!

We at Dovetail keep up to date – and “chapeau” as they say in the cycling world to Sandy Adirondack for her latest charity legal update briefing.

Over-arching impression is how complex finance and other legal matters have become with the 2006 Charities Acts and 2006 Companies Act – if your income is above, say £1m, no problems, you just have to comply with all of it and should have be able to pay staff with competence to know about this stuff – or to pay us to help you.

Below that level, it is nighmare-ish, with different requirements kicking in at various levels of income and assets held. As an example, charitable companies and all those registered as charities have to produce a SOFA (statement of financial activities) once income exceeds £250,000. But between £250,000 and £500,000 do you need natural categories or functional categories on your SOFA? !! And the dates issues are also complex, with Charity Commission using 1 April and Companies House using 6 April for starting dates you could easily submit the wrong format to Companies House.

Simplification? I don’t think so!

And that is only accounting – add HR, fundraising, Tax and VAT, ICT and other issues and how does anyone manage to run a small charitable organisation these days?

Dovetail has some answers and so watch this space!

Archiving issues

A Radio 4 item yesterday about the British Library staff having to learn to use green screen Amstrads, alongside paper diaries and later materials to read Barbara Castle’s diaries gave me pause for thought!

And not many have the luxury of being Tony Benn using paper based typing or audio cassette transcription – see www.tonybenn.com/archive.html

A number of our clients have data going way back (2000 and before) and are either in a bind where materials need to be continually updated or letf “as was” with the risk that technology, especially software and storage devices, moves on so far that the data becomes inaccessible.

We ourselves have data doing back to 1994 which has to be read on legacy machines – work in progress here and with one client to resolve these issues

Financial Fools Day!

As April 1st 2009 is soon to be upon us, welcome to April Financial Fools day

Part of me applauds this naming as a mutual; Dunfermline Building Society is digested by the Nationwide, showing up what seems on the outside to be a failure of supervision by the FSA (Financial Services Agency). But then, Dunfermline Building Society was a provider of social housing, and the UK needs more social housing.

Similarly, bankers and banks are a target for the 1 April 2009 demo in various parts of London. On the other hand some of those women and men have given or finessed donations to the charitable agencies that some of you work for, and that a number of your beneficiaries depend on.
Overall it is clear the boundaries of sensible risk have been crossed and some over rewarded for failure.

But the private sector is one of the three UK sectors, one of the pillars that supports UK society, and anything more than specifically selective opprobrium will make us all the poorer.

VAT registration benefits?

Recent work with a client helping them to decide if they should register for VAT or not (they did!) , aside from the benefits of doing so reminded me of two interesting issues;
• some voluntary and community organisations register and end up with HMRC paying them – especially if they have significant zero rated sales outputs – e.g. publications
• the partial exemption apportionment concerning claiming back VAT on overheads can make significant differences when a significant proportion of the organisation’s overheads are non staff costs and subject to VAT
And reminds me that all clients coming up to audit should make sure that a VAT check is part of the audit work if in any way relevant – for example the coming removal of the VAT concessions on staff hire for temporary workers, which takes effect from 1 April 2009

Friday admin day – being Chair of London Cycling Campaign

Being Chair of the London Cycling Campaign today – more environmental commitment

Mucho palmarès to Koy Thompson, the LCC Chief Executive for bring LCC through some times and leading the LCC to the stratosphere of exercise fior cycling as a health, transport and environmental solution!”

Last day of Lottery funded Full Cost recovery training tomorrow

I’m doing the last day of our Lottery funded Full Cost recovery training tomorrow – in Leeds. And the couple of clients who are using the new version of the model seem to be doing well with it.

Be good to hear from anyone else using it to compare notes