These are two different things, and the names do a good job of hiding that. The trustees’ annual report is a document you write. The annual return is a form you fill in online. Both are due ten months after your financial year ends, which is why they turn up as one job and get talked about as one thing.
Knowing which is which matters, because what you have to do with each depends on your income, and the two sets of rules do not line up.
If the annual cycle is one of several things your board has been meaning to get on top of, you can book a free clarity call.
What each one actually is
The trustees’ annual report is a narrative document that sits alongside your accounts. It explains what the charity set out to do, what it did, how it is governed and how it stands financially. Trustees are responsible for preparing it, and it forms part of the accounts pack rather than being a separate publication.
The annual return is an online form submitted through your My Charity Commission Account. It asks for figures and answers to a set of questions about the charity, and the questions change from year to year. It is regulatory data collection rather than a piece of writing.
There is a third document that adds to the confusion. The report many charities produce for donors and funders, with photos and case studies, is a voluntary impact report. It is not a legal requirement, and it is not a substitute for the trustees’ annual report, though the two can share material.
What you prepare, and what you submit
Every registered charity prepares a trustees’ annual report and accounts, whatever its income. That obligation does not have a floor. What changes with income is how much of it you send to the Commission.
Below £10,000, and not a CIO, you complete an annual update rather than a full return. You report income and spending and keep your charity’s details current on the register. No documents are uploaded.
Between £10,000 and £25,000, you file the full annual return and answer its questions. You still prepare the report and accounts, and you still keep them, but you do not upload them.
Above £25,000, you file the return and upload three documents: the trustees’ annual report, the accounts, and the independent examiner’s or auditor’s report. You also have to confirm that no serious incidents went unreported during the year.
CIOs sit outside this pattern. A charitable incorporated organisation files an annual return and accounts regardless of income, including a year with nothing coming in at all.
One threshold on that list is moving. The point at which accounts need independent examination rises from £25,000 to £40,000 for financial years ending on or after 30 September 2026, so a charity sitting between those two figures may find its position changes depending on when its year ends. The charity accounting guide covers the accounts side in more detail.
Writing the trustees’ annual report
The report is organised under a standard set of headings. You can reword them to suit the charity as long as the required information is clearly there.
Reference and administrative details come first, and they are the easy part: the charity’s name and registration number, the address, and the names of everyone who served as a trustee during the year or was in post when the report was approved.
Objectives and activities asks you to summarise the charitable objects set out in your governing document and the main activities you ran to further them. Charities in England and Wales have an extra requirement here. You have to explain how those activities served the public benefit, and state that the trustees have had regard to the Commission’s guidance on it. That statement is often the thing missing from an otherwise decent report.
Achievements and performance is where trustees summarise what the charity accomplished. Two questions form it usefully: what difference did the work make to the people it was for, and did it produce any wider benefit. Small charities sometimes leave this section thin because they have no formal impact measurement. Plain description of what happened is worth more here than borrowed language about outcomes.
The financial review covers the charity’s position at year end, any of your funds that are materially in deficit, and your reserves policy – what you hold, why, how it compares to your target, and what you are doing about any gap. Two points from the 2026 SORP are worth building in as you write. The reserves figure has to be consistent with the accounts, with a reconciliation where the link is not obvious. And a charity holding no reserves, or with negative net assets, has to explain why it is still able to keep operating.
Structure, governance and management covers the nature of your governing document, how the charity is constituted, and how trustees are recruited and appointed. Larger charities go further into decision-making and training.
Plans for future periods are a summary of where the charity is heading. Under the 2026 SORP, this applies to charities of every size, which is a change from the previous version where smaller charities were left out.
The annual report tends to expose things rather than cause them. A thin achievements section usually means nobody agreed what success looked like; a reserves paragraph that will not come together usually means the funds have never been properly separated. If writing it has surfaced something like that, a free 30-minute clarity call is a sensible place to take it.
Filing the annual return
Get the report and accounts finished before you open the form. Most of what the return asks for is already in them, and filling the form first means going back and forth.
You will need your income and expenditure figures, details of any income from central or local government, information about work outside the UK and which countries it was in, the number of staff and volunteers, your bank account details, and your financial year dates. Above £25,000, you will also need the three documents ready to upload as PDFs.
Access runs through individual accounts rather than one shared charity login. Everyone signs in with their own email address and password.
The structure is worth understanding. Your charity has a named contact who acts as primary administrator, holds all the permissions, and grants access to everyone else. Trustees can each have an account, but they do not have to, and they get one when the contact invites them. Accountants and other advisers can be given third-party access in the same way. Whoever files the return needs the permission to do it, and the contact controls that.
The thing that causes trouble is the contact having moved on. If the person named as your charity contact has left, that role has to be transferred before anyone can file, and the week before a deadline is a poor time to find that out.
The questions have expanded over recent years to cover areas like safeguarding and how charities use their data, and they continue to change. Read the current year’s guidance before you start rather than working from what you remember of last time.
The deadline, and being late
The deadline is ten months after the end of your financial year. A charity with a year ending 31 March 2026 files by 31 January 2027. A year ending 31 December 2026 gives you until 31 October 2027.
Charitable companies have a second, earlier deadline that catches people out. Accounts go to Companies House nine months after the year end, a month ahead of the Commission filing. Same accounts, two regulators, two dates. For that 31 March 2026 year end, Companies House wants them by 31 December 2026.
Late filing shows publicly. The register marks charities whose documents are overdue, and that marker is visible to anyone who looks, including funders part-way through assessing an application. Persistent default can bring regulatory action, though the more common cost is quieter: a grant assessor sees the flag and forms a view.
What ends up public
The register entry carries your income and expenditure figures, the names of your trustees, your governing document details, and, above £25,000, the trustees’ annual report and accounts as submitted.
That last point is worth sitting with. The report you write is not filed away somewhere. It is published, and it is often the first thing a prospective funder reads about your charity, alongside whatever they find on your website. Good record keeping through the year is what makes it possible to write something worth reading in January rather than assembling it from memory.
This article is general information for UK charities and not advice on any specific situation. For your charity’s circumstances, speak to a charity-friendly accountant or independent examiner.
If the reporting cycle keeps arriving as a scramble, our charity governance support covers the systems that make it routine.
