Not-for-profit bookkeeping is ordinary bookkeeping with a second audience. The first audience is the same as any small file: can we make wages, is the BAS true, would a tax agent survive July. The second audience is a board, a membership, sometimes ACNC, sometimes a funder, sometimes a public officer who took the job because nobody else had a Tuesday.
The original Bookkeeping Centre kept those files — health networks, clinics, associations — and the old testimonials talked about grant acquittals and month-end arriving without theatre. Theatre is a special-purpose report invented in a panic from a ledger that only knew “income”. This is the file that makes the special-purpose report a reprint.
This is not charity-law advice. Incorporated associations are state creatures. Companies limited by guarantee are Commonwealth. Charities, deductible gift recipients and tax-exempt statuses are separate doors. Confirm ACNC, your state regulator and the ATO for the entity you actually are.
Say what the entity is, on one page
Before anyone renames an account, write:
- legal name and ABN
- structure (association, CLG, trust, other)
- whether you are an ACNC-registered charity, and your size category if you are
- whether you have DGR endorsement, and for which fund or the whole entity
- GST registration and reporting (cash or accruals, Simpler BAS or full)
- who can sign, who can approve a payment, who holds the lock date
- the grants that are live, with acquittal dates
If that page does not exist, the rest of this essay is decoration. A bookkeeper who inherits a login in May should not have to guess whether the Christmas raffle was deductible.
DGR is the item boards most often overclaim. Deductible Gift Recipient endorsement is an ATO status. It is not implied by a good cause, a school-adjacent vibe, or a Facebook donate button. If you do not have it, do not say “tax deductible” and do not code receipts as if a donor will claim them. If you do have it, keep the receipting rules the ATO currently publishes. This desk will not invent a receipt format.
Income that tells the truth about dependence
Split income the way a sceptical member would ask:
- member fees and subscriptions
- ticketed events and trading (bar, merch, hall hire, consulting)
- donations and bequests (and, if you are DGR, the DGR stream named as such)
- grants, each program named
- sponsorships
- interest and other
A club that looks healthy because a three-year grant landed in July is not healthy. It is temporarily cash-rich. The thirteen-week forecast should treat restricted cash as unusable for the rent unless the agreement says otherwise. The board pack should show trading versus grants on page one.
Member fees can be GST-free, taxable, or a mixed supply depending on what the member actually gets. Confirm the current ATO treatment for your membership, especially if it includes magazines, merch or a social component. Do not copy another association’s tax code. GST, where it applies, is 10%.
Sponsorship is often a taxable supply of advertising. A “sponsorship” that is really a donation needs the facts to match the word. The ledger should not launder one into the other because the treasurer liked the sound.
Grants versus trading, every month
Grants get their own ledger, their own unspent figure and their own acquittal pack. That work lives in grant acquittals for not-for-profits. Do not repeat it here except as a rule: if you cannot produce one program on one page, you are not ready to lodge the acquittal or to tell the board you had a surplus.
Trading gets a normal close. A bar inside an association is still a till, still stock, still GST on most prepared drinks and meals. See retail and hospitality. A charity letterhead does not make a beer GST-free.
If staff split time between a funded program and the op-shop, timesheets or a standing split you can defend are not optional. Super Guarantee is 12% from 1 July 2025 — confirm the ATO. Payday super from 1 July 2026 applies to employees whether or not the wage was funded by a grant. The grant may pay the super. The employee still has to receive it on time.
The board is a control, not a courtesy
A not-for-profit board that only sees a bank balance is a risk committee that has not noticed. Give them, monthly or at least each time they meet:
- unrestricted cash versus restricted cash
- result, with grants shown separately
- aged payables, including ATO and super
- acquittal dates in the next 90 days
- related-party payments (staff who are also board, hall hire to a member’s company)
- three sentences: what we delivered, what is late, what we will not do again
Do not send a 40-note statutory pack to a volunteer board unless they asked and will read it. Do send the appendix. The management-reports essay is the shape. Health-network boards were an original-site client type for a reason: they already knew that restricted money is a trust.
Minutes should record decisions about money, not a re-litigation of every coffee. If the constitution requires member approval for a spend, the ledger is not a workaround.
Payroll, volunteers and the people mess
Employees are employees. STP, PAYG, super, a Fair Work instrument if one covers the work. Confirm the award. Do not invent a “community rate”. Honoraria can be wages in disguise; have the agent look at anything regular.
Volunteers are not free labour you can put on an acquittal as a cash expense. Reimbursements need dockets. Volunteer gifts need a policy. If a “volunteer” is working set hours under direction, ask the employee-versus-volunteer question before the Fair Work question asks you.
Contractor versus employee is the same test as in a clinic or a site hut. A facilitator who comes every Thursday may not be a contractor because the invoice says so.
ACNC, state filings and the year that is not only tax
If you are a registered charity, ACNC financial reporting follows your size category and the current thresholds — confirm them on the ACNC site, because they move. The financial report you lodge should be reconcilable to the file you ran all year. A special-purpose document invented in December is how an auditor starts from scratch.
Associations still have state returns, a public officer, and often an AGM pack. The AGM pack should not be the first time members see a related-party figure. Build it from the same close you already do.
Tax exemption, if you have it, is not a reason to skip GST, payroll, or FBT questions. Confirm each status separately. A tax-exempt charity can still have a taxable arm. A GST-registered association still remits 10% on its taxable supplies.
Keep records for the ATO period (a working habit is five years from lodgement; confirm) and for any longer period a funder or ACNC expects. A feed is not a record. A Google Drive only the treasurer can open is not a succession plan.
Related parties, the op-shop and the awkward
Board members’ companies supplying the association. A CEO’s partner on payroll. A hall hired to the president’s yoga class at mates’ rates. All of these can be lawful. None of them should be invisible. Put them on the balance sheet or the note in language that makes a reviewer sit up. The chart of accounts essay is blunt about related-party mess for a reason.
Op-shop and raffle cash is a till problem. Count it, bank it, do not let it sit in a biscuit tin that funds petty cash and a farewell. Raffles and fundraising have state permit rules this journal will not invent — confirm your state.
Assets bought with a grant may still be the funder’s in spirit even if they sit on your register. Label them. When the program ends, you will be asked.
What the Rosebery desk was being paid for
A file that a volunteer treasurer could hand over in a week. Validated numbers for whoever signed the BAS. A grant pack that already existed. A board that was bored in the useful way.
You can still buy that as controller hours. You can also install the one-page entity legend, the income split, the grant register and a four-page pack, and stop calling a bank balance a surplus. The industry guides hub sits next to the financial control hub for this exact reason: the association is an industry, and the board is a control. Keep both boring enough that the work — the reason the entity exists — can be the interesting part.
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