NGO Accounting Services in India

Coding starts the day a receipt is entered, tagged to the grant that funded it, so restricted, unrestricted and corpus balances stay apart through the year instead of being untangled at audit time. You keep the grant agreements, the board minutes and the field vouchers, while Patron takes the posting, the fund-wise ledgers, the donor schedules and the reporting calendar. Programme staff send documents monthly against a fixed cut-off, and fund tracking for CSR-backed trusts covers the mechanics in practice.

Scoping begins with a count of the funded projects running at once, whether foreign contribution is received in the year, and the registrations that must be kept current. Bookkeeping for a trust, fund reports, donor schedules and utilisation certificates sit inside it. Renewals, valuation work and anything filed via the central tax portal for commercial receipts are handled under a separate assignment.

NGO accounting services fit organisations that answer to their funders as much as to the tax department. Most are trusts, societies and Section 8 companies whose incoming money carries conditions, and cannot simply pool into one general fund.

• Trusts that have just received their first foreign grant and now must run an FCRA designated account.
• Section 8 companies juggling several donor projects at once, each grant tied to its own approved budget.
• NGOs that must issue utilisation certificates to donors and collect them back from implementing partners.
• Registered charities filing the annual statement of donations so their donors can claim 80G relief.
• Societies whose auditor needs Form 10B this year because foreign contribution has changed the report form.
• CSR-funded foundations reporting to corporate donors on how each project's budget was actually spent.
• Trusts holding corpus gifts with written donor directions that cannot be spent as ordinary income.

Section 12A and FCRA both turn on where each rupee came from, so donor records and corpus letters carry more weight than the receipt.

• Record of voluntary contributions with donor name, address and PAN, split into corpus, restricted and unrestricted
• Corpus donation letters carrying the donor's specific written direction
• Grant sanction letters, donor agreements and approved project budgets with restriction conditions
• FCRA designated account statement (SBI Sansad Marg, New Delhi) and all FCRA utilisation account statements
• Prior year Form FC-4 annual return with its FCRA asset and utilisation schedules
• Utilisation certificates issued to donors, and UCs plus expense statements collected from sub-grantees / implementing partners
• Project-wise and activity-wise expenditure statements with the cost-allocation basis for shared overheads
• Prior year Form 10B / 10BB audit report, Form 10BD statement of donations and Form 10BE certificates
• Bank statements for every account, separated into domestic and FCRA accounts

For a single trust with a few restricted fund heads, NGO accounting services begin at INR 2,499. The fee grows with the number of grants and separate fund heads your books track, a split our guide to restricted versus unrestricted funds covers. Speak with an accounting specialist on +91 94594 56700.

Fees exclude GST and government charges. Final quote confirmed after a scoping review.

All fees and charges listed are indicative only and do not constitute a binding offer. Final amounts may vary depending on the volume of work and the complexity involved.

Professional accounting and compliance charges are scoped to your number of entities, funding stage and monthly transaction volume, and are separate from statutory and government charges. Contact us for a detailed, fixed quote.

Get a free NGO and Non-Profit Accounting consultation - Call +91 945 945 6700 or WhatsApp us. No-obligation assessment.

What the law protects in a not-for-profit is the donor's and the exchequer's shared interest that money given for a purpose was actually spent on it, and Sections 11 and 12 of the Income-tax Act are where that protection is written. Exemption is not automatic; it is earned by applying income to the stated objects and evidencing it.

So the books are built to prove application, restriction and source, all three. A minimum share of the year's income has to be spent, foreign money has to sit in a ring-fenced account, and every donation has to be reported for the donor's deduction to hold. That is why the FCRA Designated Bank Account and Fund-Based Accounting are structural, not optional. NGO accounting services keep these evidenced against the provisions below.

• Sections 11, 12 and 12AB, Income-tax Act 1961A 12AB-registered trust or society is exempt on income applied to charitable objects, subject to the 85% application rule.
• Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010Foreign donations require FCRA registration or prior permission, a designated SBI New Delhi account and annual reporting in Form FC-4. The FCRA Rules 2011 and CBDT's 12AB registration notifications frame the reporting.
• Section 80G with Form 10BD80G approval lets donors deduct their gift, and the trust reports each donation in the Form 10BD statement - relevant to Restricted Corpus Donations.
• Section 12A(1)(b) with Form 10B/10BBThe trust files an audit report in Form 10B or 10BB, and fund accounting keeps restricted and unrestricted funds apart.
• Section 44AA, Income-tax Act 1961Books are maintained once receipts cross the prescribed limits, so the application of income can be computed and defended.
• Rule 3(1), Companies (Accounts) Rules 2014Where accounting software is used the audit trail stays enabled, so a grant reallocation is always logged. Securing 12A/80G itself is handled on the hub page.

Practical note: During an income-tax assessment, the 85% application of income and the FCRA utilisation are examined first; a shortfall in either is the common trigger for a loss of exemption.

Official sources: Ministry of Corporate Affairs · Income Tax Department · GST Portal · Startup India (DPIIT)

TDS / TCS deposit (Challan ITNS-281) is due 7th of every month (30 April for March). Provident Fund (ECR) and ESI contribution is due 15th of every month. GSTR-3B (summary return and tax payment) is due 20th of every month for monthly filers. Patron tracks each against your books so nothing is reconstructed after the fact. Call +91 94594 56700 to set up a filing-reminder schedule.

Trustees are really deciding how much of a programme officer's week goes into paperwork. Every hour spent reconstructing which grant paid for a field vehicle or a training camp is an hour not spent in the field. The reconstruction happens anyway, later, under a donor's questions rather than on your own timetable.

Applying for a larger grant becomes a decision rather than a gamble once mid-year you can see how far each existing commitment has been drawn. Where foreign contributions are involved, FCRA accounting shows what a funder's ceiling really means: what the organisation can genuinely absorb and account for within the year.

Funder reporting formats are confirmed at the start: what each of your donors demands, in which template, and on what cycle. Books built without those formats in mind get rebuilt for every report, much as reporting for technology clients is shaped by its readers.