If your charity's income sits between £25,000 and £1 million, the law says you must have an independent examination rather than a full audit, and much of what then decides how smoothly that goes is what you kept for your records a year earlier. As a charity accountant, I've lost count of the examinations I have rescued in the final week because a bank statement was missing, or because nobody could prove that a trustee payment had actually been approved.
This article sets out exactly what records a small charity must keep for independent examination, in plain English, so that you and your examiner are not chasing paperwork in the run-up to your Charity Commission filing deadline. It follows the same practical approach we use with our own clients who need independent examination for charities.
An independent examination is not an audit. It is a lighter-touch review carried out by an independent examiner who checks that your accounts are consistent with the underlying records and that nothing looks obviously wrong. The examiner does not test every transaction. Instead, they rely on the records you provide.
That is precisely why record keeping matters. If your records are complete and easy to follow, the examination is straightforward. If they are patchy, the examiner has two choices. They can spend more time (and charge you for it), or they can qualify their report. Neither is a good outcome. Trustees also have a legal duty under charity law to keep proper accounting records, so this is not simply a matter of convenience.
Worth reading alongside this: our guide on when independent examination is required for a UK charity explains the thresholds across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
These are the core records every charity needs, regardless of size. Without them, no examiner can do their job and you cannot produce meaningful annual accounts.
A continuous, chronological record of every transaction, whether it flows through cash, a bank account or a digital system. Each entry should show the date, the amount, who it went to or came from, and what fund it belongs to. A carefully kept cash book is the single most useful document you can hand to an examiner.
Full statements covering the whole year, for every bank, savings, building society and credit card account the charity holds. This includes accounts opened partway through the year, dormant accounts, and any account that is not in day-to-day use. Missing a single month is one of the most common reasons an examination gets held up.
Regular checks showing that your cash book balance matches the actual bank statement balance. Reconciliations are the quickest way to spot a missing transaction or a bookkeeping error. Best practice is monthly, but at the very least they should be prepared at the year end. If reconciliations are missing, examiners tend to dig deeper, which costs you time.
Practical tip: If you use digital software, keep it switched on for the whole year. Retrospectively entering a year's worth of transactions into a spreadsheet in April is where most record keeping problems begin. See our charity bookkeeping services if you would rather someone else kept the ledger in order.
The examiner needs to see that money coming in has been properly recorded, banked and allocated to the right fund. Keeping evidence of income clean and consistent saves hours of back and forth. The records to keep include:
Expenditure is usually where examiners ask the most questions, especially around trustee payments, related party transactions and anything that looks unusual. Solid supporting records make those questions easy to answer:
| Category | What to provide to the examiner |
|---|---|
| Transactions | Cash book, digital accounting logs, petty cash records. |
| Banking | Full-year bank statements, cheque books, paying-in slips and reconciliation sheets. |
| Income and expenditure | All invoices, purchase receipts, grant contracts and donation summaries. |
| Assets and liabilities | Asset register, debtors list, creditors list and loan agreements. |
| Governance | Signed trustee minutes, the charity constitution and a draft Trustees' Annual Report. |
The examiner needs to confirm what the charity owns and owes as at the year end. This is a short list, but it is often incomplete because assets are bought and forgotten about:
A list of permanent equipment, property, vehicles and any other significant items the charity owns, with the date of purchase and cost. Include anything material that a new trustee would expect to see on the balance sheet.
Records of money owed to the charity (debtors) and money the charity owes to suppliers, lenders or HMRC (creditors) at the year end. Prepayments and accrued income belong here too.
Governance records are the ones charities most often overlook, yet they matter enormously because an examiner has to satisfy themselves that the charity is being run properly. The key documents are:
Copies of minutes from every trustee meeting held during the financial year. These should show that major financial decisions, budgets and any trustee remuneration were formally approved. If a large payment was made, the examiner will look for the minute that authorised it.
The charity's constitution, trust deed, articles of association or CIO constitution, as currently in force. Examiners will check that what the charity actually did is consistent with what it is permitted to do.
A draft of the narrative report setting out the charity's purposes, achievements, structure and financial position over the year. Our guide to the trustees' annual report requirements for small charities explains what must be included and what is optional.
Common mistake: trustees often keep minutes in a folder on someone's laptop and only share them when asked. Keep a single, clearly dated file of signed minutes for the whole year. It is one of the first things an examiner asks for and one of the easiest to lose track of.
A small charity must keep its accounting records for at least six years from the end of the financial year to which they relate. This is the period HMRC expects for tax purposes, and the Charity Commission expects records to be kept and be available for inspection on request. Some records, such as anything relating to property or long-term grant conditions, deserve to be kept longer.
Good record keeping is really just a habit. Put these in place and your independent examination becomes a formality rather than a scramble:
Aim to have the previous month's entries reconciled within two weeks of the month end. Little and often beats one long session.
Digital copies are acceptable to most examiners and are far easier to search. Name each file with the date and the supplier.
Tag every transaction to the correct fund so that fund accounting falls out naturally. Our guide to SORP 2026 and fund accounting explains restricted, unrestricted and designated funds.
Approved budgets, significant purchases and trustee payments should all be recorded in the minutes as they happen.
Assemble the records listed in this article into one folder so your examiner can get straight to work. You can also download free templates from our free charity templates library.
If your trustees are unsure how to keep records properly, our charity record keeping training covers exactly this, in a way that is designed for volunteers rather than accountants.
Quick answers to the questions trustees ask us most often about record keeping and independent examination.