Setting up a new ExpensePlus account if your charity registers to become a CIO
This help guide article is for you if your organisation is changing from being a Charity to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO).
You will learn about things you need to consider, and what is needed during the transition period when both your old charity and new CIO are active.
Setting up a new ExpensePlus account
There will be a time period where you will be running two charities simultaneously. During this period you will need to manage two sets of financial accounts (they are separate legal entities, so will require separate accounts, separate independent examinations etc.)
As soon as your CIO is set up, you should if you contact our support team using the 'send us a message' option, from your user registered email address, they will be able to assist you with:
- Setting up your new CIO account
- Copying over your existing organisation structure
Top Tip: the setup process is super quick, so it's best to wait until your new charity is set up before adding your new charity to ExpensePlus.
Note: If you are using LoveGiving for your Charity, then we'd recommend changing your donation page URL within your existing instance of ExpensePlus, then immediately setting up LoveGiving and entering the same URL previously used within your new instance of ExpensePlus. This will enable givers to continue to donate via your LoveGiving page without interruption or the need to change any links to your LoveGiving page.
Good to Know: You can switch between your two ExpensePlus accounts (your existing charity and your new CIO) at the click of a button. See this helpguide article to learn more about using ExpensePlus for multiple charities. Any users you give access to can also switch between both accounts.
Managing the transition
Within your existing charity's ExpensePlus account, you should continue to process transactions in the same way as before. Within your new ExpensePlus account for the CIO, you should enter all transactions going through the CIO's bank account(s).
We recommend keeping the transition period as short as possible. You can facilitate this by:
- opening a new bank account for your new CIO as soon as the CIO is registered;
- register for Gift Aid for the new entity as soon as possible (as this application can take a while);
- move the bulk of your cash from the old entity to the new entity as soon as the new CIO bank account is open;
- move over all outgoing standing orders and direct debits to your new CIO bank account;
- move payment processor payouts to arrive into your new CIO bank account;
- process all payments inside your CIO instance of ExpensePlus, making payments from your new CIO bank account;
- be proactive with donors asking them to set up new standing orders with your new bank details, and asking them to complete new Gift Aid declarations;
- sort out the legal transfer of any assets.
Getting donors to transition is typically the most challenging of these steps, so it is important that you are proactive in encouraging this.
In reality, most organisations will still have a few donations coming into their old charity's bank account after several months.
You will need to decide when to transfer the remaining balance over to your new CIO account and close down your old charity's bank account. You may need to lose some donation income to avoid indefinitely having two charities running in parallel and the extra administration and costs this incurs.
You can't close down your old charity whilst you still have cash within the bank accounts and transactions happening in those bank accounts. So you also need to maintain accounts for your old charity until it is closed.
Note: When setting up a CIO, you will need to ask your donors to:
- Update the bank account they have for your charity, and
- Complete a new Gift Aid declaration
Subscription pricing during the transition and afterwards
During the transition period, each entity will need to have its own ExpensePlus account with its own subscription (you should also budget for paying for two independent examinations during the transition period, two sets of bank fees etc. as these will be needed too).
For ExpensePlus, we do discount the subscription of your old account by 50% during the transition period.
Once your old charity is officially closed and your final accounts have been submitted to the Charity Commission, send us a message. We will change your subscription so your old charity's ExpensePlus account will become a free account.
You won't need to pay a subscription fee once your existing charity is officially closed, and you will still be able to access your data for free for as long as you want and need.
Top tip: your financial year start date for the new entity is determined by the date your CIO gets approved and when your bank account is opened. This may not be on your desired financial year start date. However, this isn't an issue.
You can shorten or lengthen your charity's financial year to set your future financial years to how you want them to be on the charity commission website.
How to record money moved between the old charity and the new CIO bank account
Within ExpensePlus you will need to record the outgoing amounts from your old charity bank account as expenditure and the income amounts into your new CIO account as income.
At year-end, the person creating your accounts will need to correct for this and should ensure this money is shown as a transfer instead.
To enable the money transferred to be easily identified, and to avoid the skewing of income and expenditure, we would recommend that within your new CIO ExpensePlus account you:
- create a fund called 'transfers' and an income category group and income category within this, also called transfers;
- record all transfers from your old charity bank account into this fund/category.
To allocate this money to the different funds it relates to, we'd recommend you use the fund-to-fund transfer feature to give each fund its correct balance.