Accounting obligations

All holders of fixed-term money collection permits issued under the old Finnish Money Collection Act before 1 March 2020 have a statutory duty to submit accounts.

The deadline for submitting accounts is six months after the expiry of the permit, and the competent authority is either the National Police Board or the permit holder’s local police department, whichever issued the permit. Individual permits may include stipulations on interim accounts, including deadlines for submitting them. 

Accounts must be drawn up in writing in either Finnish or Swedish. Accounts can be submitted by email or by post. 

Information to be included in accounting reports

Accounting reports must contain the following financial information about money collection campaigns:

• Gross proceeds from money collection, i.e. the amount received from donors
• Necessary and immediate collection costs deducted from total income
• Net proceeds from money collection, i.e. the amount left over after expenses have been deducted.  This is the amount that must be used to promote the cause specified in the money collection permit.

Accounting reports should only include information about money collection and the use of funds raised. Proceeds from money collection include all monetary donations received from the public in response to appeals without giving the donors anything in return. Your organisation’s other income, such as proceeds from raffles or sales (product sales and proceeds from car boot sales or from operating a market stall or running a café, etc.), should not be included in these accounts.
Only expenses directly attributable to your money collection operation can be deducted from the proceeds of the operation. Proceeds from money collection cannot be used to cover overheads or costs incurred from your other operations, such as your product sales.

Any expenses that you are deducting from your proceeds must be itemised in your accounting report. However, you do not have to use your proceeds from money collection to cover your expenses. You can also use other monies to pay for expenses. Money collection expenses that have been paid for with your organisation’s other income should not be included in your report.

Using your proceeds from money collection to promote the non-profit causes specified in your permit should not be reported as expenses. The idea is not to report zero or near-zero net proceeds.

Instead, you should report as your net proceeds the amount left over after your expenses have been deducted from the total amount raised through donations. The way in which you have used your net proceeds to promote the non-profit causes specified in your permit should be described separately.

If you did not raise any funds under the financial year you are making an annual accounting report of, then submit a zero report. In the zero report, you can tell for example that you did not receive any donations or that there was no money collection organized during the financial year. However, you still need to submit an accounting report in these situations.

Where should we send our accounts?

Accounting reports and supporting documents can be submitted by post or by email. 

Accounts for permits issued by the National Police Board should be sent by post to the National Police Board, Gambling Administration, PO Box 50, FI-11101 RIIHIMÄKI or by email to arpajaishallinto@poliisi.fi.

Accounts for permits issued by the local police should be sent to the permit holder’s local police department. Contact details for police departments can be found here.

Accounts are checked and signed off on by the authority that issued the permit. The competent authority can ask permit holders for more information and order them to correct any misstatements in their accounts. The authorities can also ask permit holders to redo their accounts altogether, if there are so many misstatements that correcting them would be unreasonably time-consuming. 

Failing to submit accounts disqualifies an applicant from being issued with a new money collection permit. Submitting incomplete or incorrectly drawn up accounts may also delay the processing of any new permit application. It is therefore worth reading the instructions provided on this website carefully before drawing up your accounts!