Terms of Engagement — Registered Charities
These are the terms for our annual compliance pack for New Zealand registered charities. They're written for a volunteer treasurer to actually read. If anything here doesn't suit your board, say so before you pay and we'll talk about it.
1. Who we are and what this is
Deplexify ("we", "us") prepares documents from the figures and information your charity gives us. Under the Charities Act 2005 every registered charity must, within 6 months after each balance date, complete an annual return, have it dated and signed on the charity's behalf, and send it to Charities Services — accompanied by a copy of the financial statements for the year and the prescribed fee (ss 41(1), 41(2)). We prepare the paperwork for that. We do not file it and we never ask for your login.
2. What this is not — please read this one
This is a preparation engagement. It is not an audit, a review, or any other assurance engagement. We take the figures your treasurer gives us and put them into the form the reporting standard requires. We do not examine your records, we do not test your figures against your bank statements, and we express no opinion and no assurance on them. We would not, in any event, audit or review something we had prepared ourselves.
Where the Charities Act does require an audit or a review — total operating expenditure of your charity and every entity it controls of $550,000 or more in each of the two preceding accounting periods means a review or an audit, $1.1 million or more means an audit (ss 42C, 42D) — that is a separate engagement with a qualified auditor, and we will tell you so and refer you on. Failing to comply with s 42C is an offence carrying a fine of up to $50,000 (s 42E), so it is not a corner worth cutting.
This is not legal advice and it is not tax advice.
3. Your charity approves, and your charity files
The Performance Report we prepare is a draft until your charity approves it. The reporting standards require it to record the date it was approved, who authorised it, and the relevant signatures. The annual return must be dated and signed on the charity's behalf (s 41(1)(b)) — one authorised person is what the Act asks for.
That certification is wider than the figures: the person signing certifies that the information in the form is correct, that they are authorised to complete it, and — where new officers have been added — that those officers are not disqualified under s 36B(2) and that at least one current officer is 18 or older. Those are the charity's statements to make, not ours. Our pack sets out what each one rests on so the person signing can actually stand behind it.
Your charity files the return from its own account at charities.govt.nz, and pays the fee directly to Charities Services. We are not your agent and we do not submit on your behalf unless you separately engage us to.
4. What you get
Four documents, prepared from your own figures:
- The Performance Report for your reporting tier, in full — the document the annual return has to be accompanied by. For a Tier 4 charity that is the cash-based report the Tier 4 (NFP) Standard requires; for a Tier 3 charity it is the accrual report the Tier 3 (NFP) Standard requires, which has seven components including a statement of financial position, a statement of cash flows and sixteen notes.
- The annual return answers — every question the return asks, in the order it asks them, ready to type into your Charities Services account.
- A compliance calendar — your dates, the assurance test, where your charity sits against the tier thresholds for next year, and (if your charity is also an incorporated society) the Incorporated Societies Act duties that still apply to it.
- An outstanding-items sheet — anything we still need from you. It is deliberately a separate document: the three above are what your charity approves and files, and they never end in a list of what is missing.
We prepare Tier 4 and Tier 3 in full. Tier 2 and Tier 1 are the full PBE Standards and we do not generate those — see clause 6.
5. Not a registered charity? We are the wrong product, and we'll say so
These duties belong to entities registered with Charities Services. If your entity is not registered — an incorporated society that never applied, or one that has been deregistered — it owes a different set of documents to a different regulator: financial statements and an annual return registered with the Registrar of Incorporated Societies, within 6 months of balance date (Incorporated Societies Act 2022 ss 102, 109).
That is our other pack, and we will move your order across rather than refund it if you would rather. Our free checker asks the question first for exactly this reason. If you have already paid and it turns out you are not a registered charity, tell us and you choose: we switch you to the societies pack, or we refund you in full.
6. When we hand your charity on instead
Some charities need something this pack does not build, and we would rather say so than sell you a document prepared to the wrong standard:
- Tier 2 or Tier 1 — annual expenses over $5 million, or public accountability. Those are the full PBE Standards.
- An audit or review is required (clause 2). We can still prepare the report for the auditor to work from, but the assurance itself is theirs.
- Figures that do not reconcile and cannot be made to. On a Tier 3 report the statement of financial position has to balance, the accumulated funds note has to tie to it, and the cash flow has to tie to the bank. If yours do not and we cannot find why from what you have given us, we will tell you rather than issue a report that does not add up.
In each case we will tell you before we invoice, or refund you if you have already paid.
7. Fees
For a Tier 4 charity: NZ$249 for the pack (Standard), or NZ$395 if you want an accountant to read it before your charity approves it (Premium). For a Tier 3 charity, whose report is a full accrual set: NZ$595 Standard, or NZ$895 Premium. Your tier is worked out from the figures you give us, and the price shown before you pay is the one that applies. One-off launch pricing, paid up front, GST inclusive.
The Premium tier is still not an assurance engagement. An accountant reads the pack and tells you what they would question; it is a second pair of eyes, not an audit or a review, and it produces no opinion and no assurance report.
The annual return fee is separate and you pay it to Charities Services, not to us. Nil if your charity's total gross income was under $10,000; $51.11 if you file online with the documents uploaded; $76.67 if you post or email them. Your return is not complete until Charities Services has the correct fee, even if everything else was filed on time.
8. Timing
We prepare your pack from a complete questionnaire. If something is missing we mark it on the outstanding-items sheet and carry on with everything else — we do not stall the whole pack over one figure, and we do not guess it either.
We are not responsible for a deadline missed because a questionnaire came back incomplete, or arrived too close to the date. If your return is already overdue, tell us: it changes what is worth doing first, and Charities Services will take an extension request before the date but not after it.
9. Refunds
Full refund, no argument, if: we find your entity is not a registered charity (clause 5); your charity is in a tier we do not build (clause 6); or we simply cannot produce the pack from what you have. Ask within 30 days of paying.
Once we have delivered the pack we do not refund because the charity changed its mind, because a figure turned out to be wrong, or because someone else could have done it free. Charities Services does provide free templates and a combined online return for Tier 4 charities, and we say so on the front page — you are paying for the tier determination, the statement of service performance and the checking, not for access to a form.
10. Your charity's responsibilities
You give us figures that are complete and honest to the best of your knowledge. We will not invent one: anything you have not given us is shown as a dash and listed on the outstanding-items sheet, never quietly defaulted to zero. A zero is a claim about your charity's affairs and it goes into a document you sign and file.
You tell us if something material changes between the questionnaire and approval. You check the pack before approving it — it is your charity's report, and the person who signs the return is certifying it.
11. Liability
Our total liability for any claim arising out of this engagement is limited to the fee you paid us. We are not liable for penalties, tax, deregistration, or loss of funding arising from figures or information you gave us that were wrong or incomplete, or from a filing you made late.
Nothing here limits any right you have under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or the Fair Trading Act 1986 that cannot lawfully be limited.
12. Your information
We collect what the questionnaire asks for and use it to prepare your pack. That includes personal information about your officers — names, dates of birth and home addresses — because the annual return requires them. Charities Services does not publish officers' dates of birth or home addresses, and neither do we: we hold them only to prepare your return, and we do not share them with anyone other than you.
We keep your file so we can prepare next year's pack faster. Ask us to delete it and we will. We do not sell your information and we do not use it to market anything other than our own compliance work.
13. General
New Zealand law governs these terms. If a clause is unenforceable the rest still stands. We may update these terms for future engagements; the version in force when you pay is the one that applies to your pack, and it is the version numbered at the top of this page.
Questions before you pay: [email protected].