What Financial Reporting Do Charities Have to Do in Australia?
Short answer: every charity registered with the ACNC has to lodge an Annual Information Statement each year. Whether you also need a full financial report, and whether that report needs a review or a full audit, depends on your charity's size, based on annual revenue.
If you're on a board or you're the one who ends up owning this each year, you've probably already worked out that reporting itself isn't the hard part, everyone has to do that. The hard part is knowing how much, and to what standard, because that shifts as your charity grows. Here's the breakdown.
What is the Annual Information Statement?
Almost every registered charity submits an Annual Information Statement (AIS) each year, covering a 12-month reporting period, through the ACNC Charity Portal. It asks about your charity's activities and operations, plus some basic financials, and for a lot of small charities, that's genuinely as far as it goes.
It's due within six months of the end of that period, so if you run a standard financial year, that's normally 31 December. Extensions do happen (the ACNC Commissioner pushed the 2025 statement out to 31 January 2026), so it's worth checking the current due date on the ACNC Charity Register rather than assuming the standard date applies this year.
Everything else, whether you need a financial report and what kind, builds on top of this.
What do I need to report, based on my charity's size?
The ACNC sorts charities into three size tiers based on annual revenue (these thresholds shifted in 2022, so if you learned the old numbers a while back, here's the current version):
Size | Annual revenue | AIS | Financial report | Assurance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Small | Under $500,000 | Required | Optional | None required |
Medium | $500,000 – $3 million | Required | Required | Review or audit, your choice |
Large | $3 million+ | Required | Required | Audit only |
If you're small, the AIS alone covers your obligation. You can lodge a financial report voluntarily if you want to (some funders like to see it), but it's genuinely optional.
If you're medium, you choose between a review and a full audit, unless a funding agreement or your own governing document already decides it for you.
If you're large, there's no choice. It has to be audited.
That said, a genuine one-off jump doesn't always have to lock you into a bigger tier.
Take a charity like Riverside Community Op Shop. It's a small, steady operation, a few volunteers, a couple of stores, sitting around $420,000 in revenue most years. Then a long-time supporter passes away and leaves the charity $180,000 in her will. Revenue for the year jumps to $600,000.
Most boards in that position assume they're now locked into being a medium charity, audit and all. They're not, necessarily. Riverside can apply to the ACNC to keep its small classification for that one reporting period, since the jump came from a genuine one-off event and revenue is expected to settle back under $500,000 the following year. It's not automatic, and it can't be used two years running.
One big year doesn't have to lock you into a permanent tier change, provided it genuinely was a one-off. If revenue keeps climbing the year after, though, you're a medium charity regardless.
What do I need to include in a financial report?
For medium and large charities, the financial report needs to meet Australian Accounting Standards and give a true and fair view of your financial position. At minimum, that's a statement of profit or loss and comprehensive income, plus the other standard statements, a signed Responsible Persons' Declaration, and a reviewer's or auditor's report attached, depending on your size.
Small charities can generally use either cash or accrual accounting, whichever suits how you run things, unless your governing document or a funder requires accrual specifically. Medium and large charities have to use accrual accounting.
Audits and reviews tend to get planned for early, since they're an expected cost once a charity knows it's crossed into medium.
The accrual switch is what generally catches people out, specifically in the year a charity crosses from small to medium for the first time. If your books have been kept on a cash basis for years, restating everything to accrual isn't a quick fix, and it's not something to leave until the weeks before a deadline. Bring your accountant or auditor into the conversation as soon as you can see the transition coming.
There's also a decision about whether you prepare special purpose or general purpose financial statements, depending on whether your charity is classified as a "reporting entity." Your accountant will be able to tell you which side of that line you sit on.
Are there exceptions to these rules?
A handful of charities sit outside the usual pathway:
Charities regulated by ORIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations) don't submit an AIS or financial report to the ACNC at all. They report to ORIC instead.
Non-government schools registered as charities can use a streamlined arrangement with the Department of Education instead of the standard financial information questions.
Basic Religious Charities still lodge an AIS every year, but skip the financial information questions and the financial report altogether, no matter their size.
If none of these apply to you, move on to the next section. If one does, it's worth reading the ACNC's guidance on that specific pathway, since these exceptions each have their own detailed criteria.
What happens if I miss the deadline?
Most boards already take this seriously, and to be fair, it's easy for a lodgement date to slip when everyone's stretched across a dozen other priorities. It's genuinely worth building this into your calendar the same way you would a major grant deadline.
Missing the AIS, or not lodging a required financial report, puts your charity's registration at risk. The ACNC can revoke registration for charities that fall behind, and that flows on to DGR status, grant eligibility, and how funders and the public see you.
Why this is worth understanding properly
Once you lodge your AIS and financial report, most of that information becomes public on the ACNC Charity Register. It's the only standardised, comparable financial dataset covering every registered charity in the country.
It's exactly what makes genuine peer comparison possible in the first place.
At Vercia, we take this same reporting data and match your charity against genuine peers, same size, same kind of work, and turn it into a board-ready report you can bring straight into your next meeting, showing exactly where you're strong, where you're stretched, and where something's worth a closer look.