SOAS SU FINANCIAL REPORT 2018/19 SOAS Students’ Union has existed in various forms for nearly 100 years, and became a charity 10 years ago. You can find our accounts going back to 2009/10 on our website. As a registered charity we have to produce and publish financial information every year in the form of accounts. These accounts must be audited by external experts and submitted to the Charity Commission who regulate us. Part of the responsibilities of the SU Trustee Board that you elect is to oversee our finances, and publish these accounts. Our audited accounts are published online demonstrating that we use all our resources on our charitable purposes – the aims that we set out when we established the charity. We send our audited accounts to SOAS as the governing body of SOAS (their Board of Trustees) has a responsibility under the Education Act to make sure we’re using our resources for the benefit of SOAS students. All of that means that we use our resources carefully, our finances are transparent and there are assurances that what we do is in the interests of SOAS students, our members. Due to SOAS’ closure in response to Covid-19 we have been unable to complete our audit in relation to 2018/19 financial year (July 2018 – July 2019). The draft accounts have been produced however part of the audit involves the auditors checking through our paperwork, like till receipts, invoices, society expense claims so that they can say with confidence what is in our books matches up with reality – this is why we require receipts and invoices when clubs and societies claim expenses for example. The audit will be completed and accounts published when SOAS are able to re-open the campus safely. Although we don’t have fully audited and published accounts for last year available, we are including some information in this report that will give you some sense of the SU’s financial situation. PLEASE NOTE this information is in draft form and will not be confirmed until the audited accounts are published. This chart shows the overall income and expenditure of the Students’ Union over the past 3 years. After a few years in deficit the SU was able for the second year to raise some surplus, by bringing in a small amount more income than expenditure.
Income/Expenditure comparison by year. £Million 1.6 1.55 1.5 1.45 1.4 1.35 1.3 1.25 1.2 1.15
1.54 1.49 1.45
1.44 1.38 1.29
Income
Expenditure 18/19
17/18
16/17
