25 September 2026

The Trustees’ Annual Report: what a PTA actually has to write

A registered charity files two things each year: the accounts, and a report from the trustees that goes with them. The accounts are the figures. The report is the part in words.

The Charity Commission publishes a template for it and you can fill that in as it stands. You do not have to. Your own format is fine, as long as everything the template asks for is in it. Either way the contents are the same, and that is what this page goes through: section by section, in the order a PTA’s report usually runs, and ends with a prompt that will draft it and the AGM slides for you.

What the report is, and what it is not

The Trustees’ Annual Report sits in front of the accounts and explains them. The accounts say what came in and what went out; the report says what the PTA is for, what it did with the money, and how it is run. Read on its own, a column of figures does not tell a parent, a headteacher or the Charity Commission whether the year went well.

It is not a newsletter and it is not the Chair’s speech at the AGM, though a good Chair’s report usually ends up inside it. It is a document with expected contents, signed by a trustee, filed with the regulator and public afterwards.

If your PTA is unregistered, you do not file one. Plenty of PTAs write something like it anyway, because it is the only place the year gets described rather than tabulated, and because the next committee will want it.

Who writes it, and who signs it

It is the trustees’ report, not the treasurer’s. In practice the treasurer drafts the financial review and the figures, the Chair drafts the narrative, and the committee approves the whole thing before it is signed. One or two trustees sign it on behalf of all of them, and the signature carries a declaration that the trustees have approved it.

The order that matters is: committee approves, trustee signs, then it is filed and received at the AGM. Members receive the report and accounts at the AGM; they do not approve them there.

The facts at the front

A short factual block, and the easiest section to write: the charity’s name and any name it is known by, its registration number, its registered address, and the trustees who served during the year.

Trustees who joined or left part-way through need their dates. This is the detail most often got wrong, because the committee list you have to hand is today’s, and the report covers a year in which it changed. It also has to match what the register says, which somebody has to update after each AGM.

Objectives, activities and public benefit

Your purpose, copied from your governing document rather than paraphrased. For a PTA it is usually some form of advancing the education of the pupils at the school, by developing relationships between staff and parents and by providing facilities or equipment. Then the main activities you carried out to pursue it.

This section carries the public benefit statement, which is a specific thing rather than a general sentiment: a confirmation that the trustees have had regard to the Charity Commission’s guidance on public benefit when planning and carrying out the charity’s activities. It is one sentence, it is expected, and leaving it out is one of the commonest omissions in a small charity’s report.

Achievements and performance

What you raised, what it cost to raise it, and what the money was spent on. This is the section a reader actually reads, and the one your ledger should be able to answer without anybody reconstructing a year from a bank statement.

Two things are worth doing here that go beyond the minimum. Report each event net of its costs, so the fireworks night that took a lot and cost a lot is not flattered next to the quiz that took less and cost nothing. And show the prior year beside it, because a single year’s figure tells nobody whether the fair is growing or quietly shrinking.

Then the other direction: what the PTA gave the school, itemised. “We donated £21,000” is a number; a list of the reading scheme, the balance bikes and the playground project is what the parents who bought the raffle tickets wanted to know.

The financial review, and the reserves policy

The position at the year end: what the charity holds, split between unrestricted and restricted funds, and what it owes. If a figure moved a long way, say why in a sentence or two — a large closing balance because the school had not yet decided how to spend it is a normal and easily explained thing, and looks quite different if left unexplained.

Restricted funds are the half that catches people out. Money given for a stated purpose is reported separately and cannot be spent on anything else. If your report shows a single pot, either you genuinely hold nothing restricted, or the split has not been tracked.

The section also carries the reserves policy: how much the PTA aims to keep back, why that figure, and how often the trustees check it against what is actually held. A PTA that holds a float against a bad fundraising year should say so; the alternative reading of a healthy balance is a charity sitting on money it should be spending.

Structure, governance and management

Three short answers: what your governing document is and when it was adopted or amended, how the charity is constituted (most PTAs are unincorporated associations), and how trustees are selected — usually elected at the AGM, with co-option during the year if the constitution allows it.

It reads like boilerplate and mostly is, until the year somebody amends the constitution and nobody records the date.

Where the independent examiner comes in

Above £25,000 of gross income in England and Wales the accounts must be independently examined. The examiner’s report is its own document, addressed to the trustees, and it is bound in with the report and accounts rather than written by you.

It is worth knowing what it says, because it is narrower than people assume. An examiner’s report states that the examination is carried out under section 145 of the Charities Act 2011, that the trustees remain responsible for preparing the accounts, and that the examiner has found nothing suggesting the accounting records fell short of section 130, that the accounts disagree with those records, or that they fail the form and content requirements of the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008. It explicitly does not offer a “true and fair” opinion, which is an audit, and it is not one.

The practical consequence for the treasurer: an examiner is checking your records against your accounts, so the work is in having records that can be checked, not in the fortnight before they arrive.

Filing it

The report is filed with the accounts, and the deadline runs from your financial year end rather than from your AGM. In England and Wales it is 10 months; Scotland and Northern Ireland differ, and the CC16a page sets all three out. In England and Wales a registered charity files an annual return where its gross income is £10,000 or more, and every CIO files whatever its income.

Whether, and in what form, any of that applies to your PTA turns on how it is constituted, whether it is registered and which nation it is in, so it is worth checking against the regulator rather than against a blog post.

Do not wait for the AGM to file. If the meeting slips, the deadline does not move with it.

Getting an AI to draft it for you

Drafting is the part treasurers put off, and it is the part a language model is genuinely good at, as long as it is given the figures rather than asked for them. The prompt below does both jobs: the report, and the slides for the AGM. It tells the model to work only from what you give it, and to leave a square bracket anywhere you have not given it something rather than producing a plausible number.

What to give it. The first three are what the report is built from. The rest are optional and only change how it looks.

• ·Your accounts for the year. What came in, what went out, and the closing position. On Treasurer’s Ledger: Export CC16a xlsx, on year-end close.
• ·Each activity, with what it raised and what it cost. The fair, the discos, the quiz, each on their own rather than as one total. On Treasurer’s Ledger: Print committee report, on the dashboard.
• ·What the PTA funded, itemised. The reading scheme and the playground, not just a total. On Treasurer’s Ledger: the same committee report.
• ·Your constitution. Optional, and worth it. The report then copies your objects rather than writing its own.
• ·Your PTA logo. Optional, for the slides. The deck takes its colours from it.
• ·A few photographs from the year. Optional, and read the box below first.

If you would rather not send photographs, don’t — see the box below, because pictures of an event are a different question from figures. The prompt handles it: with no images it leaves a marked placeholder on each slide that wants one, saying what to put there, and lists them again at the end so you can add them yourself in Slides or PowerPoint. Same for the logo.

You are helping the trustees of a UK parent-teacher association
(a small charity) draft their Trustees' Annual Report for the year just ended,
and a slide deck to present it at the AGM.

WHAT I WILL GIVE YOU
My accounts for the year, a list of the activities we ran with what each one
raised and what it cost, and a list of what we funded. Possibly also our
constitution, our logo, and some photographs from the year. They are attached
as files, or pasted below this prompt, or both. Work only from those. If a
figure or a fact you need is not in them, ask me for it. Images are the one
exception — see IMAGES below.

RULES ABOUT FIGURES — these matter more than the writing
1. Never invent, estimate or "for example" a number, a name or a date. If I
   have not given you something, leave it as a square bracket saying what is
   missing, e.g. [reserves target — fill in].
2. Do not round my figures, reconcile them, or make them add up. If two things
   I give you disagree, say so at the end in a list headed CHECK THESE. Do not
   quietly fix it.
3. Do not add achievements, events or spending I have not mentioned.
4. Never state that the charity has complied with anything, met any threshold,
   or is required to do anything. That is for the trustees and their examiner.

WHAT TO PRODUCE
Part 1 — the report, with these headings in this order:
  About us; Objectives and activities; Report from the Chair; Achievements and
  performance; Financial review; Structure, governance and management;
  Declaration.
  In "Objectives and activities", include a sentence confirming the trustees
  have had regard to the Charity Commission's guidance on public benefit.
  In "Achievements and performance", give each event NET of its costs, and show
  last year beside this year wherever I have given you last year's figure.
  In "Financial review", keep restricted and unrestricted funds separate, and
  include the reserves policy and how often the trustees review it.

Part 2 — the slides, to present at the AGM. Run them in this order: title;
  contents; about us; what we set out to do; what we ran and what it raised;
  what we funded; where we stand financially; thank you.
  One idea per slide, a short heading, at most five bullets, no more than about
  fifteen words a bullet. Put the detail in speaker notes under each slide,
  written to be read aloud by a volunteer who is nervous about public speaking.
  Give the events table and the funded-items list a slide each — those are the
  two the room came for. Name people in the thank-you.
  Give me the deck as plain text I can paste into Google Slides or PowerPoint,
  with each slide separated by a line of dashes and its speaker notes labelled
  NOTES.

IMAGES
  Check what I have actually attached before you write this part. Do not assume
  either way.
  If I gave you a logo: put it on the title slide and, small, in a corner of
  the rest, and take the deck's colours from it. If I did not: leave
  [PTA LOGO HERE] on the title slide and pick a plain, neutral colour scheme.
  If I gave you photographs: place each one on the slide it belongs to and tell
  me in one line which photo you used where, so I can check it. Do not caption
  a photograph with anything I have not told you about it, and never name or
  describe a child in one.
  If I gave you no photographs: do not ask me for them and do not leave the
  slides bare. On each slide where a picture would help, leave a placeholder on
  its own line saying what to put there and why, like
  [PHOTO: the summer fair — the crowd shot, not a close-up of children] or
  [PHOTO: the equipment we funded, in use]. List those placeholders again at
  the end so I can work through them in one go.

TONE
Plain English. Short sentences. Warm but not gushing — this is read by parents,
the headteacher and possibly the regulator. No exclamation marks except in the
thank-you. No jargon, no "delighted to announce", no emoji.

Finally, list anything in either part that you were unsure about and that a
trustee should check before this is signed.

Ask me for any figures or facts you need before you start, then write both
parts.

MY FIGURES AND NOTES FOR THE YEAR
[paste yours here]

It works better if you answer its questions rather than pushing straight through. The draft that comes back is a draft: the Chair’s section in particular usually needs rewriting in an actual human’s voice, because that is the one part of the report nobody wants to sound generated.

How Treasurer’s Ledger fits in

Most of the work in this report is not writing — it is finding the figures the writing needs, a year after the events they describe.

This page is general information about what a trustees’ report contains, not advice about your charity. The Charity Commission publishes its own guidance on trustees’ annual reports and on public benefit, your governing document is the authority on how your committee takes decisions, and your independent examiner is the right person to ask about your particular accounts.