Section A

This is the date of your charity’s financial year end, sometimes known as the year end date or period end date. This information is shown on the Scottish Charity Register and will already be filled in.

Changing your financial year end date will change the date your annual return and accounts are due (the deadline is 9 months following your year end date).

If you want to change your financial year end date, please save your progress, click on 'Making changes to your charity' at the top of the page, and then select your new financial year end date.

A charity trustee is a person who has general control or management of the running of a charity.  They might not do all the day-to-day work but they are the people who are legally responsible for the charity including its strategy and decisions. You might refer to your trustees as the committee, the management committee, the board, or if the charity is a company then you may know them as your directors.

Enter the number of trustees at the financial year end date.

These are the number of people employed by your charity in return for a wage at the financial year end date.

Volunteers are people who give time to help the charity on an unpaid basis.  They provide their time freely and are not undertaking the activities as a condition of their membership of the charity.

Charities engage volunteers in a variety of different ways and we recognise that charities may use informal volunteers on an ad-hoc basis. To answer this question we are looking for charities to provide an estimate of the number of volunteers they have used. To provide this estimate you may wish to use only the volunteers who are formal volunteers and volunteer on a regular basis.

Please select an estimate of the number of volunteers who have volunteered for the charity in the last financial year from the following options:

• 0
• 1 to 50
• 51 to 100
• 101 to 250
• Over 250

You should answer yes to this question if the charity has a bank or building society account which is in the name of the charity and is used solely by the charity. If the charity uses a personal bank account or the bank account of another charity then you should answer no. You should answer no even if a personal or another charity bank account is used exclusively for your charity. If the charity is managed by a legal firm and a client account is used, you should answer yes.

If you publish the accounts on your charity’s own website answer yes to this question and insert the direct link in section 6b. OSCR will include this link to your accounts information on your charity’s register entry.

OSCR highly recommends that you include a link to your accounts if you have them publicly available. It is a great way of you reaching a wider public, as you can also include other information you would like the public to see on the page that contains your accounts.

If you do not provide a link, your charity's register extract may contain a set of redacted accounts published by OSCR (depending on its legal form or income threshold), or a link to another regulator that may hold your accounts. Providing a link to us can have the added bonus of your charity using the linked page on your website to share other information about its activities and impact. Please note you will still have to upload accounts later in the online annual return even when you give us a link.

Add the link to where we can find the accounts on your charity’s website.

For Cross Border charities, (those registered with both OSCR and the Charity Commission for England and Wales) there is one additional Yes/No question on the annual return. This question is about undertaking activities in Scotland and will only appear if relevant.

When you click 'Save and Next' you will progress to Section B which will ask for some financial information about the charity.