5 March 2025
Financial Reporting Requirements
All incorporated societies must prepare and file annual financial statements that record their financial activities.
The 2022 Act sets out minimum standards for small societies, while the External Reporting Board (XRB) sets out reporting requirements for larger societies – there are 4 tiers of XRB reporting standards. You’ll need to check which standards apply to your society.
Watch a webinar on the XRB reporting tiers, particularly tiers 3 and 4.
Read more on reporting for small societies, including a small society reporting template.
Read more on XRB standards, guidance and templates.
Changes for societies also registered as charities
There are 6,000 societies that are also registered as charities with Charities Services. If this applies to your society, you will still need to reregister your society under the 2022 Act by 5 April 2026 to retain your status as an incorporated society.
Read more on the key changes for registered charities.
Nominate a contact person for your society
As part of the reregistration process, your society must have a dedicated contact person(s).
It is compulsory for your society to include a clause, in its constitution, nominating at least one contact person, (but no more than 3), and how each contact person is elected or appointed. A contact person doesn’t need to be an officer of the society.
For each contact person you must provide:
- their name
- an email address and
- a physical or postal address and
- a telephone number.
These details are for the Registrar of Incorporated Societies to use, they won’t be made publicly available.
Read more about what must be included in a society’s constitution.
Below is a constitution checklist you can use to make sure your society meets the minimum requirements under the 2022 Act.
Download our constitution checklist.
Reregister now
It has been a year since the 2022 Act came into force. Societies that want to remain on the register must reregister by 5 April 2026 to keep your incorporated society status.
It takes some time to prepare for reregistration. We strongly recommend starting the reregistration process soon, so you don’t run out of time.
If your society does not reregister under the 2022 Act by 5 April 2026, it will cease to exist. It will no longer be an incorporated society, which has the following implications:
- This removes your right to make decisions on behalf of your society, such as, deciding what happens to any assets it owns. The Registrar could direct how to distribute them instead.
- This takes away the separate legal identity your society previously had. This means members could be held personally liable for debts or obligations (such as leases) owed by the society. Similarly, your society could not sign any new contracts in its name.
- The name of the society will no longer have any protection – another group could incorporate using the same name.
We have tools and resources including videos and webinars to help you prepare for reregistration.
Read more about reregistration
If you do Not Reregister
It’s important to understand what it means if your society does not reregister. If you decide not to reregister your society but want to keep operating, you will need to apply for a new IRD number. This is because when a society is deregistered, it loses its legal status as an incorporated body and will be treated as a new entity for tax purposes.
If your society is registered for GST or as an employer, you’ll need to ask the Inland Revenue to transfer the registrations. You’ll also need to reapply for any income tax exemption or deduction as a not-for-profit organisation.
Source: MBIE/Inland Revenue
Disclaimer
Unfortunately, with details changing all the time and at such speed, we need to add that the above content is correct at the time of writing as far as the author is aware and is very much subject to change. We have, to the best of our ability, acknowledged any shared content. All related links provided to the corresponding websites are subject to change as they are live links.
