Scottish charity accounts: OSCR, thresholds and the 2026 change

Every charity established in Scotland, and every charity that operates in Scotland and represents itself as a charity there, is registered with and regulated by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. The accounting rules come from the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations rather than from the England and Wales framework.

The practical consequence for cross-border charities is that a body registered in both jurisdictions has to satisfy both regimes, and the Scottish requirements are not a subset of the English ones.

For a non-company charity, the dividing line sits at £250,000 of gross income.

• Gross income under £250,000 — receipts and payments accounts are permitted. These are a straightforward statement of money in and money out with a statement of balances, and they are considerably cheaper to produce.
• Gross income of £250,000 or more — fully accrued accounts are required, prepared under the Charities SORP, with a statement of financial activities and a balance sheet.

Charitable companies are a separate case: company law requires accruals accounts regardless of income, so the receipts and payments option is not available to them at any level.

The trustees' annual report accompanies either set, and its content requirements scale with the charity's size. It is the part most often treated as an afterthought and the part OSCR most often comments on.

Every set of Scottish charity accounts needs external scrutiny of some kind. The question is whether that scrutiny is an audit or the lighter and cheaper independent examination — and the threshold for that moved.

If your charity has gross income of, say, £600,000 and an accounting period starting after that date, you have moved from needing a registered auditor to needing an independent examiner. That is a materially smaller piece of work and a materially smaller fee.

Illustrative example: a charity with gross income of £700,000 and an accounting period starting on or after 1 January 2026 now has a choice between independent examination and audit, because £700,000 sits under the new £1,000,000 threshold. Under the old £500,000 threshold the same charity would have needed a full statutory audit — so this is a genuine saving in professional fees, not a change on paper only. A second charity, with gross income of £1,200,000 and the same accounting period, still needs an audit under either threshold, because £1,200,000 sits above £1,000,000 as well as above the old £500,000 figure. The threshold rise does nothing for a charity of that size.

Two things still override the income test. A charity whose constitution requires an audit must have one whatever its income, and trustees or funders can require an audit voluntarily. A funding agreement that specifies audited accounts is the most common reason a charity below the threshold still gets audited, and it is worth reading those agreements again now that the threshold has moved.

Accounts and the trustees' annual report have to reach OSCR within nine months of the charity's financial year end, submitted through the OSCR Online portal along with the annual return. A charity that is also a company files separately at Companies House on the company timetable, which is a different deadline for the same numbers and a common cause of a late filing.

OSCR publishes the accounts of larger charities on the public register. Funders and grant-makers read them.

Where Buzz helps is preparation and independent examination for charities under the threshold, alongside the ordinary payroll, VAT and bookkeeping that a charity needs like any other organisation. Statutory audit is regulated work that a registered auditor has to sign, and where a charity needs one we will say so and work alongside the auditor.

Read the Scotland overview for the rest of what is different here, or see our accounting packages.