A board pack has one job, which is to let the board decide without guessing.

The four questions every pack should answer

• How much cash do we hold today, and how many weeks does it cover at current spend?
• What sits in each restricted fund, and what has been spent against it?
• How is each activity tracking against its budget, rather than the organisation in total?
• What decision is on the table this month, and what does each option cost?

Most packs I read answer the first question and half of the third. The middle two are where boards get caught out.

What that looks like on paper

Four pages is usually enough. A cash summary with the bank balances and the next three months of known commitments. A fund table. A budget comparison by activity. Then a short page of decisions, each with a figure attached.

Narrative matters, though it belongs next to the money. If the youth programme delivered forty sessions, the pack should show what those sessions cost and which award paid for them.

Anything longer gets skimmed. A board of volunteers reading twenty pages on a Tuesday evening will read the first two.

Funders want their money tracked separately, and your board needs the same view to avoid overcommitting.

Company law does not require a CIC to keep fund accounting in the way a registered charity does. Grant conditions create the restriction in practice. If an award pays for a particular project over a particular period, that money is not available for anything else.

The fund table

One table, one row per award. For each award, show the balance brought forward, income received in the period, spend in the period, amounts committed but not yet paid, and the balance carried forward.

A board reading that table can see two things quickly. Which awards are underspent with the end date approaching, and which have already run out while the work continues.

Where the coding happens

Every transaction should be coded to a fund at the point it enters the books. In Xero that means tracking categories set up per award, applied to bank transactions, bills, invoices and payroll.

Apportioned costs need a rule agreed in advance. Rent, insurance and the CEO’s time usually split across several awards. Write the basis down once, apply it every month, and keep it available for the funder.

Done that way, the fund table is a report you run. Done any other way, it is a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds from bank statements the week before the meeting.

Every CIC director has an additional duty: prepare an annual community interest company report and file it with the accounts.

That report goes on the public record at Companies House. Funders read it. So do councils considering a contract. It asks what the company did to benefit the community, who it consulted, and how directors were remunerated.

The filing timetable

• Annual accounts and the CIC report are due at Companies House nine months after the accounting reference date. A new company’s first accounts are due twenty one months after incorporation.
• Corporation tax is payable nine months and one day after the end of the accounting period. The company tax return follows twelve months after period end.
• The confirmation statement is separate and filed every year regardless.

The filing route

A CIC cannot use standard Companies House WebFiling for its accounts. Accounts and the CIC report go together, either through the online CIC service or on paper. A missing or incomplete report can get the whole package rejected, and a rejection near the deadline turns into a late filing penalty.

Companies House penalties for late accounts are the ordinary ones, and they double if you file late two years running. From April 2028, all companies must file accounts using commercial software, which makes tidy records in a proper system worth having well before then.

The point for board reporting is simple. Consultation, beneficiary numbers and community impact are easier to write up in month nine if somebody has been recording them in month one. See the Regulator’s guidance for the current forms.

Reporting becomes routine when the date is fixed first and the work is arranged around it.

Pick the board meeting date for the year. Work backwards. Papers go out a week before. The pack is finished two days before that. Which means the books close on an agreed working day each month.

A workable monthly cycle

1. Bank feeds reconciled and supplier bills entered by working day three.
2. Payroll posted and apportioned to funds by working day four.
3. Debtors, creditors and fund balances reviewed by working day five.
4. Pack drafted and queries raised with the CEO by working day six.
5. Pack issued on the agreed date, every month, in the same format.

The format matters more than people expect. When the pack looks the same each month, the board compares this month with last month instead of relearning the layout.

This is the one promise I make about reporting. Figures arrive on the agreed date each month, provided the information has reached us. Board papers land before the meeting rather than during it.

A missed month is rarely about the accounts. It is usually a bill nobody sent on, or a grant letter sitting in an inbox. Agreeing who supplies what, and by when, removes most of that.

Claim requirements vary by funder, and the underlying evidence they want is remarkably consistent.

From what I see across grant-funded organisations, three things come up again and again at claim stage.

Evidence at transaction level

Not a summary figure, but the invoices, payroll records and bank entries behind it. If the claim says a sum was spent on delivery staff, the funder may ask which staff, which weeks, and how the cost was split.

A clear apportionment basis

Shared costs need an explanation that holds up. Square footage for premises, headcount for insurance, recorded hours for staff time. Agreed in advance, written down, used consistently.

Timing that matches the award period

Spend has to fall inside the funded period. Invoices dated after the end date cause problems, as do costs incurred before the award was confirmed.

If your board pack already carries the fund table and the apportionment rules, a claim becomes an extract rather than a project. The organisations that find claims painful are usually reconstructing the position each time.

Worth keeping a simple register of awards alongside the accounts: award value, period, claim dates, amounts claimed, amounts received. Reviewed at every board meeting, it stops an award quietly expiring with money unclaimed.

No board pack is better than the bookkeeping underneath it, and that is where most reporting problems start.

A pack can be beautifully laid out and still be wrong. If bank accounts are not reconciled, the cash figure is a guess. If supplier bills sit in a drawer, the commitments are understated. If grant income is posted as one lump, the fund table cannot be produced at all.

The foundations worth fixing first

• Bank and card accounts reconciled monthly, with no unexplained items carried forward.
• A chart of accounts that matches how the organisation actually reports to funders.
• Tracking set up per award, applied from the first transaction rather than corrected later.
• Payroll posted in detail, with staff time apportioned by an agreed rule.
• Debtor and creditor balances that somebody has looked at and can explain.

Bookkeeping has a poor reputation in the profession, which I think is a mistake. It is the only reason a board pack can be produced on a fixed date each month.

Get those foundations right and reporting stops being a monthly rescue. The pack becomes a set of reports you run, review and issue. That is the whole of the work.