You will know by now that there were a number of changes in the Budget last week that will have an impact on charities and CICs. We’ve put together a quick list of things that might help….
- There are changes to the Government’s National Living /Minimum Wage, and you can find the full list of rates HERE
- Those of you who are interested in may also want to look at the website for the Real Living Wage Foundation, that encourages employers to pay wages in line with the cost of living.
- There will be notable changes to employer’s National Insurance Contributions (NICs) starting in April 2025, along with a significant increase in the Employment Allowance.
These changes will undoubtedly effect budgets for next year, in some cases severely. To help you quickly assess the impact of these changes WYCAS has developed a simple WAGES COSTS spreadsheet tool, downloadable from our website, that allows you to calculate the increase in costs.
Given these additional pressures plus the generally difficult funding climate, it will be more important than ever to get your 25/26 budget agreed in good time. If you don’t already have one, we have a BUDGET TOOL that you can download from our website. It doesn’t cover everything but, it is a simple way of figuring out if your organisation has enough income to cover planned expenditure.
If you need some help with any of this, you can contact us with your detailed questions and one of the team will get back to you.
PLUS, every Monday afternoon, from November 11th to December 16th, you can book a free 30 minute advice session, where one of our Community Accountants will take you through the tools (see here for the full range), and/or answer any budgeting questions you may have.
Contact us at info@wycas.org.uk to book your place (please put ‘Free Budgeting Support’ as your e-mail subject).
Our Finance Forum on Thursday December 12th (via Zoom, from 10am – 12pm) will also have Budgeting including the NI changes, as the main topic. Anyone with an interest in finance (paid staff or trustees, volunteers etc) is welcome to join us.
Finally, the Charity Finance Group are conducting a survey on the possible impact of the Budget changes. This will help inform policy and lobbying on behalf of the sector. The deadline is November 15th, and you can find the survey HERE.
As always, please get in touch if we can be of help with your finance and accounts queries.