This webinar focused on reporting to the ACNC for the first time. We discussed charity reporting obligations and how to submit the Annual Information Statement in the ACNC Charity Portal.
Webinar transcript
Stewart McMillan
Hello, and welcome to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission's webinar. It's great to have you all here. Today's presentation will be focusing on your reporting obligations to the ACNC, including the Annual Information Statement, which is sometimes referred to as the AIS. We will explain what charities need to report and how to submit your Annual Information Statement.
My name is Stewart and I'm from the ACNC's Education and Public Affairs team. Also joining me today is Steph from our Reporting team. Steph, how are you today?
Stephanie Lai
I'm well, thank you, Stewart. Hello, everybody.
Stewart McMillan
Before we begin, I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we are presenting from today, the Wurundjeri people, and pay my respects to elders past and present. I would also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which everyone else is joining us from.
Before we get into the content for today, I'll cover some housekeeping details. If you have any issues with the webinar audio, you can try listening through your phone. Just call the number listed in the email you received when you signed up, and use the access code provided to listen in. We also have some wonderful colleagues working behind the scenes today, Gabby, Stephanie, and Jacinta, who will be answering your questions as they come through. Feel free to type your question into the GoToWebinar interface. We'll try to get to everyone's questions, but if we don't answer yours, we'll send you an email after with a response. If you think of a question later, you can contact us by emailing education@acnc.gov.au.
We are recording this webinar and will make the slides and recording available on our website in the next few days. We will also send an email to everyone who registered, providing a link to the recording and other resources mentioned throughout today's webinar. We might refer to some website links during the webinar, and if we do, we'll drop them in the chat for you all to see. And finally, we'd love to get your feedback. There will be a short survey after the webinar that will take you around 20 seconds to complete, so it'd be greatly appreciated if you could all fill it out.
All right. Our agenda for today will cover your reporting obligations to the ACNC; reporting periods, so when you need to submit your report, and what period of time you need to report for; how to use the ACNC Charity Portal, which is where you submit your report; then we'll look at the Annual Information Statement. We'll go through all of the questions to explain what information you need to provide when you report to us. And at the end, we'll answer some common questions about reporting for the first time.
Okay, let's get started. Today, we will discuss your reporting obligations, particularly the obligation to submit the Annual Information Statement. Steph, would you like to talk us through about the ACNC reporting obligations?
Stephanie Lai
Absolutely. Thank you, Stewart, for that wonderful introduction. So, when we talk about reporting obligations, what we're mainly referring to is the requirement for registered charities to submit an Annual Information Statement, or the AIS. All registered charities need to complete the AIS every year. Only exception is charities registered with ORIC, or the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations. These charities need to report directly to ORIC, but all other charities report to the ACNC. Now, in addition to the AIS, medium and large charities are also required to submit an annual financial report. Medium charities are those that have an annual revenue of $500,000 or more but under $3 million. So they need to have their financial reports reviewed or audited. Large charities, those with annual revenue of $3 million or more, need to have their financial reports audited.
Then we have our small charities with an annual revenue under $500,000. They don't need to submit a financial report at all; however, they can choose to submit one voluntarily. I'll also talk a little bit about a group of charities called the Basic Religious Charities. They're a type of charity that has the charitable purpose of advancing religion and that also meet six specific criteria. So these charities must submit their AIS every year. However, for them, the financial questions in the AIS are not mandatory.
Now, what is the Annual Information Statement? It's an online form that asks a range of questions about your charity's operations, finances, amongst other things, over a 12-month period. You can complete your AIS online, and really shortly we'll show you what it looks like to go through the ACNC Charity Portal step by step. Now, the really good news, it is free to submit your AIS. ACNC doesn't charge a fee for reporting.
Moving on, we'll have a look at our reporting periods. So, charities will generally report for a 12-month period, but there are some situations where that's not the case. For example, if you just registered your charity and it registered in the middle of a reporting period, the first AIS will cover either a longer or shorter period of time, depending on when your charity was registered. If you aren't sure when that was, that'll be the day that you received an email from your analyst saying, congratulations, your charity is now registered.
So, the standard reporting period is the financial year from July 1st to June 30th. However, there are some charities that might report for a different period, such as the calendar year, January 1st to December 31st, or a different 12-month period. The AIS is due six months after the end of your reporting period. So, that gives you a bit of time to gather the information that you need. So you'll see here at the bottom of the slide, we have a link up on the screen, acnc.gov.au/reportingduedates. This is a really good website. We have information on there about when the AIS is due for each reporting period, and some information about what to do if you're a newly registered charity that registered in the middle of a reporting period.
Now, the biggest – probably the biggest piece of advice I would like to give you is to start your AIS well before the due date. This means that if you're doing the AIS and you realise you need some additional information, or if you need to contact us because you've encountered a question or issue, you'll have plenty of time to do so before the AIS is due. Lastly, just a quick touch on requesting for different reporting periods. It is possible somewhere down the road if your charity changes its reporting period, you can request to change that and you can do that through the Charity Portal. If you do that, that is another situation where you might have a reporting period that's not 12 months just because when you're changing, we'll want to make sure there's no gap in your reporting. Now, Stewart will show us where to go to check your charity's reporting period.
Stewart McMillan
Thank you, Steph. Now, in the audience today, we might have some charities that are due to submit their AIS quite soon. We'll also have some organisations that have only just registered, so you won't need to report just yet. And also we might have some organisations that haven't registered yet at all, but are looking to learn more about the ACNC reporting obligations. If you aren't sure when your charity needs to start reporting or what period to report for, the best place to look is on the ACNC Charity Register. That's acnc.gov.au/charity. The link is on the screen now. On the Register, you can search your charity's name or Australian Business Number, ABN. Once you find your charity, you can have a look at the charity's details. This will include your charity's next reporting due date, as well as its financial year end date.
Some charities might need to submit their 2024 AIS by the 31st of January next year. So this webinar will help you prepare for your upcoming reporting period. If you aren't due to report until later, this information will still help you understand and prepare for your reporting requirements. This webinar will be recorded, so you can watch it again before your reporting is due, just to refresh yourself. We send out email reminders when it's time for you to submit your Annual Information Statement. So it's really important that you keep your information up to date with the ACNC. When you're on the Register checking your reporting period, you can also see your charity's Address For Service email, which is where the reminders will be sent. If that is an old email, please update it in the Charity Portal. We'll show you where to do that in the next few minutes. I'll now pass over to Steph to talk about group and bulk reporting. Over to you, Steph.
Stephanie Lai
Thanks, Stewart. Most charities will report just for their organisation, but there are some situations where charities can apply to us to report as a group or report in bulk. Group reporting is when a group of registered charities submits one Annual Information Statement and one financial report on behalf of the whole group. Bulk lodgement is a bit different. It's when we have multiple registered charities submit more than one Annual Information Statement, but they're just on the same form. So for example, we might have a main administration office for a group of religious charities that might submit in bulk instead of having each church or mosque report individually. So, unlike group reporting, charities with a bulk lodgement arrangement, they report information for each specific charity on an individual basis, but the information is just on one spreadsheet. To learn more about reporting in bulk, please visit that link up on the screen, which we will pop in the chat as well.
Now, moving on to our next slide, let's take a look at streamlined reporting. This is another way that we try to make the reporting process easier for charities, and that's by working with other regulators to reduce red tape. So this basically means if your charity is also, for example, a company registered with ASIC, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, or an ancillary fund or an incorporated association in any of the states or territories, you only have to report once to the ACNC and not to your other regulator. This also means that you won't need to pay the annual reporting fee to your other regulator, since we're going to take your information and send it to them.
Stewart McMillan
Now that we've talked about the reporting requirements, let us have a look at how to report. As we mentioned before, you can submit your AIS online via the ACNC Charity Portal. We've got the link up on the screen now. You may already have an account from when you applied to register as a charity, so you can log straight back in. But if not, you'll be able to sign up at the link as well. When you set up your account, just make sure you are using your own unique email address, not the generic charity email. If you have any trouble either logging into the Charity Portal or signing up, we've got step-by-step guidance up on our website to help you. The link is on the screen now as well. It's acnc.gov.au/portalhelp.
This is what your Portal will look like when you sign in. You should see your name listed in the top right corner, and your charity name will appear under the heading 'My charities'. If you can't see your charity, or another person's name is showing at the corner, please read the guidance on the Charity Portal help page or contact our very helpful Advice team on 13 22 62. It's a real great idea to set up your Portal account sooner rather than later, so if you do have any trouble, you can reach out to us for help. If you're involved with more than one charity, you might have multiple charities listed here. That is completely fine. To access your Annual Information Statement or to update your charity details, click on the name of the charity. From here, you'll be able to see the different things you can do in the Charity Portal.
The first icon, ‘Manage reporting’, is where you'll go to submit your Annual Information Statement. This is what we'll be focusing on today, but you can also see other icons. In ‘Manage people’, you can update your charity's Responsible or Authorised People. For example, if a new board member joins, you can add them as a Responsible Person; or if you want to add your accountant, you can add them as an Authorised Person. In ‘Manage other charity details’, you can update your Address For Service. This is this email address we mentioned earlier where your AIS reminders will be sent. Please make sure you are keeping that up to date. If you're already logging in to submit your Annual Information Statement, you will be able to update your Address For Service and your Responsible People directly within the AIS.
There's also ‘Make an enquiry’, which is on the far right hand side, which lets you get into contact with us if you have any questions.
Steph, do you want to take us through how to access the AIS?
Stephanie Lai
Sure thing. Our focus for today's webinar is reporting and submitting the AIS, so we would be clicking on the ‘Manage reporting’ icon, and when you click on that, you'd be taken to a page that looks like this. So, here for our example charity, you can see that we have three icons for 2024, 2023 and 2022. If you've just recently registered, your charity might just have the 2024 AIS, or there might even be nothing at all. That's totally normal if you're not due to report soon, and the 2025 AIS icon will appear when it becomes available. Up on the screen, first icon to the left, we have ‘Start 2024 AIS’. The ‘Start’ means that you'll be starting this AIS form for the first time.
If your charity had reported previously, you might see what we have in the middle here, ‘Amend AIS,' for an earlier year. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to amend it, the option is just there in case you need to make a change or correction to an AIS that you've already submitted. Only click on ‘Amend’ if you do want to make a change to a submitted AIS.
Lastly, we have our ‘Resume AIS’ icon. This means that the AIS has been started but it hasn't been submitted. When you're doing the AIS, there is this function that lets you save your progress and finish later. So, if you do a few questions of your AIS today and then you come back to finish it tomorrow, this is what it will look like. It'll say ‘Resume 2020-something AIS’. So now let's jump into the AIS itself. I'll hand it back to Stewart.
Stewart McMillan
Thank you, Steph. Okay, so if we click ‘Start the 2024 Annual Information Statement’, you'll see a confirmation page which looks like what you see on your screen right now. Click on the ‘Start’ button at the bottom. Your AIS should open automatically, but because most of us have pop-up blockers on our internet browsers, we will need to click on the link that says ‘Click here if you were not redirected to the form within 10 seconds’. Once that is clicked, it will redirect you to the actual form.
Now we'll get into the AIS. The first thing you'll see is the introduction. There's a very important resource up the top here. That's the Annual Information Statement guide. That's the guide we publish on our website every year. For 2024, the URL is acnc.gov.au/2024AISguide. It goes through each question in detail, so it's a really handy resource to help you fill out your AIS. You can have a look at it before you're ready to start the Annual Information Statement, just to see the questions and what information you will need to have ready. You can also have it open while you're filling out the AIS, just in case you get stuck on a question.
You'll also see some icons throughout the form. Any mandatory questions will be marked with a red asterisk. A blue magnifying glass means that you will need to click it to verify the information. You'll mostly see this when it comes to filling out email addresses. Once you click it, a green tick will appear to confirm the email is valid. You can find some extra guidance by hovering your mouse over the ‘Help’ icon; it looks like a little question mark. And at the bottom of each page, there will be a ‘Save’ and ‘Next’ buttons. If you click ‘Save’, you can close the AIS and then log back into the Portal another day to finish it off; or click ‘Next’ to move on to the next page.
After the introduction, the first section of the AIS will be your charity details. Your charity's name and ABN will be pre-filled. If your charity has a website, you can provide the URL here; if you don't have a website, you could list a social media page instead. Otherwise, just leave it blank. Please don't write, ‘Not applicable’, or ‘Don't have one’, as you won't be able to progress through the form.
Next, you'll be asked for your Address For Service, the contact email we discussed earlier. This is where we send your AIS reminder, so please make sure it's an email you check regularly. Your Address For Service will appear with your charity's details on the Register. This will be the first time you come across one of those blue magnifying glasses. So, type in your email, then don't forget to click to verify. You will be asked to re-enter your email. This is to make sure you've entered the right email, because if there's a typo, we won't be able to get in contact with you regarding your AIS reminders and other important information. You can also list a physical address here, such as your charity's office or a PO box. If your charity is a company registered with ASIC, you do need to list an actual street address.
Steph, do you want to talk us through the next section?
Stephanie Lai
Yes. This next section is on reporting details. Up on the screen we'll see the first question you get asked is whether or not your charity is an incorporated association. For the purposes of the AIS, only answer yes if your charity is incorporated under one of the Acts listed here. If you're incorporated under one of these pieces of legislation, you'll also be registered with a state regulator, such as the Consumer Affairs or Fair Trading. If your charity’s name has Inc at the end, I-N-C, there’s a really good chance that your charity is probably an incorporated association. So, in that situation you would click ‘Yes’, then select the state or territory in which your charity is incorporated, and provide your incorporated association number. Now if you don't know what your incorporated association number is, you'll want to contact your state or territory regulator. Next, you'll be asked about fundraising. So, if you intend to fundraise in the next 12 months, click ‘Yes’. You can then select the state or territory where you will fundraise, or you can select ‘online’. If you have a fundraising license number, this is where you'll enter that.
You might notice that we're skipping over question four here. So question four determines if your charity is a Basic Religious Charity. As we mentioned before, those are the religious charities that meet six specific criteria. And if we already have information that tells us that your charity doesn't meet the requirements, you won't see that question. And if you want to know more about the BRC requirements, please go to acnc.gov.au/BRC.
Now let's take a look at charity size, which we briefly discussed earlier. This will determine the questions that appear in the rest of the form. In this webinar we'll be looking just at the questions for small charities; for medium and large charities – once again, that's the ones with revenue over $500,000 or over 3 million for large charities – you'll get a few extra questions. And if you want to have a look at those questions, that's once again in our AIS guide, acnc.gov.au/2024AISguide. And the link is in the chat already. So when you go to the AIS guide, you'll be able to see the exact questions for each different charity size.
Okay, so I'll now hand the floor back to Stewart, who's going to take us through the next couple of sections.
Stewart McMillan
Thank you, Steph. Now we're up to the charity programs and activity section. This is where you can tell us about the great work your charity does in the community. First, you'll be asked if your charity operated this reporting period. Operating can include running charity programs or strategic work like planning. If you didn't operate at all, please click ‘No’, and you'll be able to explain the reason why. It's important to remember, if your charity isn't operating for some reason, you are still required to complete your AIS and just indicate here that you didn't operate that year. If your charity stops operating permanently, you can wind up your charity and voluntarily revoke your registration.
If you did operate, please explain how your work helped to achieve your charity's mission; that's what your organisation was set up to achieve. This description will appear on the register, so you can share an overview of your work with the general public. Next, you can add more detail about your specific charity programs. A program is an activity or service, big or small, that your charity runs to achieve its mission. You need to add at least one program and you can add up to 10. Your program information will be saved for next year. So if you run the same activities every time, you won't need to redo this section in your next AIS. Click on ‘Add a program’. You'll need a name for your program. You might have a formal name for it, but if not, you can give it a short descriptive name, to help people understand what the program is.
You'll also need to choose a classification. On the Charity Register, people can search for charity programs by classification, so choosing the right classification will help people find your services. Click on ‘Search classification’ to open the list. You can explore the categories on the right hand side or use the search bar. Once you've found a classification, click ‘Add’. You'll also be asked to select beneficiaries of the program; that's who you are working to help. You can see some of the beneficiaries groups listed here, such as children aged six to under 15; families; people from culturally and linguistically diverse background; people with disabilities. Then you'll need to list the location, or locations if there's more than one for your program. This also helps people find your charity's work on the Register.
If the program is run overseas, select the box ‘This program is run outside of Australia,’ then list the countries. You can also provide a web link if you have more information about this program available online. Click ‘Update’ to add your program. Once you have clicked ‘Update’, it will take you back to the main part of the form where you will see your program listed. You can add more if your charity runs other activities. If you want to have a look at the program classifications and the beneficiaries list before you do your AIS, you can use our program previewer, which can be accessed at acnc.gov.au/AIS-program-previewer. The link will be put in the chat. If any of your programs are run overseas, you will be asked a few questions about the international work your charity undertakes.
Now we’re moving into some of the human resources questions. At this stage we’re about half way through the Annual Information Statement. As we mentioned before, you can always save and finish it later. So if you get to this point and need a little break, just make sure you are clicking the ‘Save’ button before you close your AIS. Then just remember to log back in before the due date to finish it off. I'll now pass over to Steph to talk about the HR and financial sections of the Annual Information Statement.
Stephanie Lai
Thank you, Stewart. Just before I move on, just really quick, if anyone has joined us a bit late we do have the chat function there; if anyone has any questions so far, you can pop it in the chat and we have people ready to answer your questions. So, moving on to the HR section, this section is nice and short. For the first question, if your charity has any paid staff, you'll need to list how many are full-time, part-time or casual. If your charity is run just by volunteers, write zero in each of the boxes and then move on. For small charities, it's not mandatory to provide your full-time equivalent staff figure, but you'll need to provide this if your charity is medium or large. So you'll see that extra little question there if your charity is medium or large. You can find more information about calculating your full-time equivalent staff figure in the AIS guide that we've mentioned. There will also be a little tool for medium and large charities that help you calculate that full-time equivalent staff figure.
Next up, we have volunteers. So, keep in mind this does include people who volunteer for your charity all throughout the year or even those that volunteer just on a one-off basis. If you don't have the exact number, that's totally fine. Use your best estimate. Now let's move on to the financials. As we mentioned, we'll be looking at the financial questions just for small charities. But keep in mind if you're a medium or large charity, there will be some extra questions and you can check out that AIS guide if you want to see those questions.
First, you'll need to know if your charity uses cash or accrual accounting. The cash accounting records revenue when money is received and expenses when money is paid out. Accrual accounting, on the other hand, records revenue when it is earned and expenses when they are incurred. So medium and large charities must use accrual accounting.
On the next slide we will have a look at the related party transactions questions. A related party is basically a person or an organisation that is connected to your charity and has significant influence over the charity. For example, related parties can include your charity's board members and senior management, as well as their close family members. So I'll give you a quick example. Let’s say the daughter of the charity's president was employed by the charity as, say, a paid financial officer, the daughter here would be a related party because she is a close family member of the president, and her pay as an employee would be the transaction. So if your charity has a reportable related party transaction, you would answer ‘Yes’ to the first question. Then you need to select the type of transaction from the list. So in our example, you would select salary or wages paid to a related party's relative. For more information, we do have a page on our website that goes into more detail. It is acnc.gov.au/rpt.
Okay, closer look at reporting periods. So, as we talked about at the beginning, most charities will report for a 12-month period, but you might be reporting for over or under a year in your AIS, for example, if you registered during your reporting period. So for example, if your charity was registered on November 1st and your reporting period ends on June 30th, your first AIS would cover an 8-month period from November 1st to June 30th. Then you'll report for a standard 12-month period, July 1st to July 30th from your next AIS onwards. So, if that's the case, you would click ‘No’ to this question about reporting for 12 months and then enter the period of time that you're reporting for.
Next, last on this page is the question for financial reports. Once again, not mandatory for small charities to submit a financial report, but you can choose to upload one and put it on the public register. Medium and large charities, keep in mind, need to provide their annual financial report.
The next section covers your charity’s income and expenses in a bit more detail. Here, you'll need to provide amounts for each item in the income statement summary. So this section will correspond with your charity’s income statement, if you have one, which is also known as the profit or loss statement. You can find more details about what is included in each category in that AIS guide. But let's take an overview; you will be asked about your charity’s revenue from government, donations and bequests, which also includes in-kind donations, revenue from providing goods or services, revenue from investments, other revenue and any other income, including gains and investment losses. And then for expenses, the categories are: employee expenses, grants and donations made for use in Australia and overseas, and then, any other expenses. So at the end of the form – sorry, at the end of this page – your charity’s net surplus or deficit will be automatically calculated.
Next up, we have our balance sheet. This is also known as the statement of financial position. This is where you list your charity’s assets and liabilities. So on the next slide, we’ll have a look, you'll be asked your charity’s total assets. So the total assets might include things like cash in the bank or the value of owned properties. Total liabilities could include, for example, any outstanding loans, any unused grant funding that hasn't been spent. Once again, your charity’s net assets or liabilities will be automatically calculated at the end of that page.
Stewart McMillan
And that brings us to the end of the financial section. There's just a few more topics to cover and then your Annual Information Statement will be ready to submit. If your charity has a state or territory regulator, such as Fair Trading, there might be a few extra questions. As we mentioned earlier, the ACNC works with other regulators, to reduce red tape. You can report to the ACNC and this will meet your reporting requirement with your state regulator. We send the information from your Annual Information Statement on to the other regulator. Because of these reporting arrangements your state or territory might require a few extra details. Please make sure you fill in this section to ensure the other regulator has all the information they require.
As an example, let's look at the extra questions for an incorporated association based in New South Wales. The first question will be the name of your public officer. You will also need to provide the public officer's email and residential address. Then you need to include your charity's AGM date, that's the annual general meeting. Lastly, you have to confirm whether your organisation has 5 or more financial members and 3 or more committee members. It's important to answer these questions so we can send it on to your state regulator so you can report once to the ACNC and don't need to report twice. Steph, do you want to take us through the final section of the Annual Information Statement?
Stephanie Lai
Sure thing. Last section of the AIS covers your charity's Responsible People. So these are the people who govern the charity, for example, our board or committee members, trustees, directors and such. In the first table that you'll see in this section, you'll see all of your charity's current Responsible People. These will be the people that you told us were responsible for your charity, either in your registration application or your last AIS. What you want to do here is have a look through the table, look through the list of people and see if anyone in that list has left your charity. If that's the case, we're going to want to remove them, and you can do that by clicking on their name and then selecting the option to remove them.
If you're looking through the list and you notice that one of your board members or other Responsible Person isn't listed in this table, you can add them in the next table. Click ‘Add Responsible Person’ and then provide their details. Now, it's important to note that even though we asked for some extra details, only the person's name and position will appear on the public Charity Register. We do ask for some additional details; that’s just because if somebody from your charity wants to call us or contact us to discuss the charity, we'll be able to use this information to confirm their identity. So, you'll need to provide their full name, their date of birth, their address, phone number and email. If they want to create a Charity Portal account for themselves, they should sign up with the same email that you provide for them here; also the same name, so if you use a nickname, the system might not recognise that they're the same person.
Now, if they already have a Charity Portal account, you'll want to make sure that when you're adding them, you add them with the email address that's already on their account. Next, you can choose to provide some cultural and language diversity information, but this is not mandatory; you will need to list their position, for example, treasurer, president, something else. And lastly, don't forget to search their name on the ASIC register for banned or disqualified people.
Stewart McMillan
Once you've added your Responsible People, you have reached the end of the Annual Information Statement. There will be a short declaration at the end, which you do need to sign. After that has been completed, all you have to do is click ‘Submit’ to lodge your AIS. You will be able to download a PDF copy of your Annual Information Statement for your reference, and I highly encourage you to do so for your charitable records.
Now, hopefully that helped answer some questions about the Annual Information Statement and what information you need to provide. It's important to remember that we have a lot of resources available to help you submit your AIS. We've included some of those links in the chat today. The most important resource is the AIS guide; the link is on your screen. But you can also come back and watch this recording when you're about to report for the first time.
If you do have any questions about the Charity Portal or about your Annual Information Statement that hasn't been covered here in the guidance, you can contact us on 13 22 62 from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm on weekdays.
Now, we have some time for questions. We've been getting quite a few questions coming through. There have been some questions that have been coming up quite a few times, so we will chat about those. Steph, we've had a few questions about what they need to report if they haven't started delivering services yet. Do they still need to submit their Annual Information Statement, and what do they list as their programs?
Stephanie Lai
Okay, so we've touched on this a little bit earlier. Just remember, as long as your charity is registered with the ACNC, it needs to submit an AIS every year, even if it didn't operate during that reporting period. You'll remember that when we went through that charity program section, there was a question that asks whether your charity operated in the last reporting period. If it didn't operate at all, you can answer ‘No’ to that question. It'll let you explain why briefly, and then the form will skip over the rest of that program section.
Now, there might be some charities that haven't started delivering services yet, but you have been doing some planning, some administrative work, or developing a strategy for your charity. Now, this still counts as operating, so you should answer ‘Yes’ if that's your situation. And then when you get to the program part, when you want to add a program, you can add something like planning, something like developing strategy, just keeping in mind that there are some volunteers out there who might want to help you with those things, and they can find your program on the Charity Register.
Stewart McMillan
Thanks, Steph. Another common question we've seen is about who can report. We've had people ask if they should be reporting themselves, or if they can get their accountant to report on the charity's behalf.
Stephanie Lai
Okay, that's a really good question. Firstly, it's important to remember that it is the responsibility of the whole charity board or committee to ensure that the AIS is completed accurately and submitted on time. However, the person who actually goes into the ACNC Charity Portal to submit the AIS, that can be a Responsible Person such as the board member themselves, or it can be an Authorised Person. This is anyone that your charity authorises to act on your charity’s behalf. It can be your charity’s accountant, like you mentioned in the question; it can be an employee, tax agent, lawyer, any of those above. If you want them to report for you, what you need to do is click on that ‘Manage reporting’ icon we saw earlier in the Charity Portal, and add them as an Authorised Person. Then they'll be able to see your charity's AIS in their Portal account. If your charity doesn't have an accountant though to help you submit the AIS, don't panic. We have plenty of resources to help you with financial questions.
Stewart McMillan
That's right. Don't forget to check out the AIS guide if you need some more information about any of the questions. We go into more details about the financial questions in the guide. Now, we have had some more questions about reporting periods and due dates. This will be different depending on when your charity was registered and what reporting period you use. As we mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, you can find your charity on the ACNC Charity Register to see its financial year end date and its next reporting due date. If you registered in the middle of a reporting period and you're not sure what period your AIS should cover, you can visit ACNC.gov.au/reportingduedates, and scroll down to the bottom for information about newly registered charities. You can find your charity's registration date in the email confirming your registration. You can also contact us on 13 22 62 for more help.
You can keep up to date with the ACNC by subscribing to our monthly newsletter, The Charitable Purpose, or by following us on socials. The details are up on the screen now. And that brings us to the end of the webinar. Thank you, Steph, for joining me today, and to Gabby, Stephanie and Jacinta for helping with the questions coming through in the chat. If we didn't get to your question. We'll send you an email response. And if you think of a question later, don't hesitate to contact us at education@acnc.gov.au. We have also recorded today's webinar, so it will be available online shortly and we'll send a link out to everyone who registered so you will be able to have access to it.
We'll also send you the slides and these key resources if you need any more information. Just before we wrap up, we'd really love to hear your feedback, so there will be a really short survey at the end of the webinar. It will only be a couple of questions. If you've got 20 seconds to stay online, we'd really appreciate it if you just fill it out and give us some of your thoughts. Thank you again for joining us today to learn more about reporting to the ACNC. Have a great day.