Treasurers Update for the Financial Year Ended 30th June 2025

Nuneaton Town Football Club CIC Limited has a financial year running July to June. This is commonplace for many companies, especially football clubs as the financial “year” aligns itself with a season playing football.

As a limited company, we must file our accounts with Companies House. We are deemed a “small company” which means we could submit what is known as “abridged accounts” which lack detail on the balance sheet and does not have to include a profit and loss account. However, as we have been publishing our management accounts profit each month, and that from 2027 a change in law means all companies will need to submit a profit and loss account, we will share more than current legal minimum.

We are electing, for the purposes of transparency, to publish a profit and loss account – or in our case, being a not-for-profit company, an income and expenditure statement. On a personal note, I applaud all other clubs that also do this, which are unfortunately few in number. It will be also interesting to see the impact when all clubs must do this in 18 months’ time!

Rather than waiting for us to file our accounts with Companies House, which is likely to be some months away, we are publishing our draft accounts today. Please note, although these are draft accounts, I don’t expect them to change substantially and if they do, I will explain any changes in future Treasurer’s updates between now and the time they are formally published.

So, here is our draft Income and Expenditure Statement for the year ended 30th June 2025:

The first thing you will notice is that Surplus (aka Profit) before tax of £9,941 is different to the £38,372 in the “Year to Date” column in the June 2025 Treasurers Update. The reason for this is that that the year-end accounts what is known as “statutory accounts,” and the monthly accounts are what are known as “management accounts.” Management Accounts are produced to help you run your business and make sure you are on a sound financial footing, showing where you are doing well and alerting you to issues. Companies can have varying policies on how they produce the management accounts each month.

Statutory accounts are designed to standardise the figures for every company, so they can be compared and follow a strict set of rules called UK Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (UK GAAP). You can read more on this here.

The year-end reports often have statutory adjustments to make them comply to financial reporting standards set out by UK GAAP and comply with the rules for Corporation Tax set out by HMRC.

The adjustments we have made are proper and valid, and made to ensure we only pay the Corporation Tax that we should be paying.

• We have adjusted the turnover downwards; by deferring the donations we have received for the Back to Nuneaton fund to be recognised in future years accounts. This is because we haven’t incurred the cost of what those donations were made for yet – i.e. building a new ground. This is allowed in UK GAAP and tax law, primarily because revenue and the costs they relate to should be reporting in the same year. Corporation Tax is a tax on profits, not revenue.

• We have made some small adjustments to Cost of Sales and Administration Costs, to cater for some late purchases and services received relating to before the 30th of June.

The balance sheet is financial snapshot of a business at one point in time, in this case the end of our financial year. In simple terms, it compares everything a business owes to everything business owes.

The Balance Sheet for Nuneaton Town is interesting, and you may benefit from some explanation as to what the balances represent:

• Cash & Bank is the total of our Bank Accounts and any cash we have in our possession. It’s quite a large figure at the moment and most of it is held in an interest-bearing savings account. The reason for its large size is:

  • In contains the unspent elements of “Back to Nuneaton”

  • It also contains the money from Season Tickets and sponsorship paid to date for next season.

• Stock is the value of the merchandise we hold but haven’t sold yet. This is valued at the amount we purchased for.

• Trade Debtors is the value of the invoices we have raise to our Sponsors that haven’t been paid as the 30th of June. As most of the invoices were raised in the latter part of June, the invoices were not yet due for payment, so this is normal.

• Accrued Income is income we are due to get but haven’t received yet – we have hardly any of this, whereas prepayments are things we have bought this year but won’t use until next year – for example, the competition entry fees for the 2025/26 season.

• We had a small number of invoices for kit and merchandise that we bought from Sporting Touch that make up our Trade Creditors balance. These have been subsequently paid. We ensure that we pay all our invoices within the number of days allowed by our suppliers, and the majority are pay within a few days of receipt.

• Income in Advance is an interesting one. Due to the time of year, we have sold Season Tickets and Sponsorship for next year (the 2025/26 season). For obvious reasons, we shouldn’t recognise that income in the year ended 30th June as we would be overstating our surplus (profits) and have a huge Corporation Tax bill. We have therefore deferred this income to next year, along with the “Back to Nuneaton” donations mentioned above.

• Accruals are cost we have incurred but haven’t had an invoice from the supplier yet.

The remaining liabilities are the amounts we owe HMRC for VAT, PAYE, and Corporation Tax. VAT and PAYE are paid via direct debit, and these amounts are not yet due for payment yet. The Corporation Tax is not due to be paid for several months.