All charities registered in Scotland have a legal duty to provide OSCR with an annual report and accounts every year. Most charities do this by submitting an online annual return through OSCR Online.

Improving your experience

We have recently made some improvements to the online annual return process. There are three main updates:

1. New information boxes will provide you with support and guidance while completing your online annual return.
2. We have added some questions to help us gather more relevant information about charities in Scotland. In the future, we plan to publish more of this information on the Scottish Charity Register.
3. We will send you an email with feedback from your online annual return. This will be sent to the principal contact and will contain specific guidance for your charity.

Watch the short video below to find out more about how the improvements we have made will make it easier for you to complete your online annual return fully and accurately.

When will I need to complete the updated online annual return?

The updated online annual return applies to all charities who have a financial year end date of 30 November 2023 or later.

Please note, this applies to your financial year end date, not your deadline date. Charities have a deadline of nine months to submit their annual information after their financial year end date. If your financial year end date is before 30 November 2023 but your deadline is after this date, you will complete the existing online annual return this year, before moving on to the updated online annual return for your next financial year.

Additional support

Please visit our How to submit an online annual return section for step-by-step guidance to help you complete your online annual return, as well as details of all the new questions. You can also read more about annual reporting here.

The OSCR Online and Annual Returns section in our FAQs also contains helpful practical information about logging in, adding or removing users, resetting your password and more.