Society status/Annual returns

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Pincher SAR is required to file an annual return with the Provincial Registrar via Alberta Registries.

Failure to do so can cause the groups' society status to be suspended and the organization effectively shutdown. Failure to do so on time can cause problems with our grants and charitable status.

1 Contents
2 Signature
3 Time Line
4 Filings

[edit] Contents

The annual return consists of

a form where we confirm or update the list of board members. (This should only be a confirmation, because we should have already submitted any changes to our board members.)
a copy of the audited financial statements for the last financial year that were presented at the last Annual General Meeting. E.g. the 2016-08-31 year end financial statements that were presented at the 2016-11-01 AGM.
a copy of the auditor's statement saying that they have audited the financial statements.

[edit] Signature

The signature must be "a director or authorized officer". So essentially any board member.

[edit] Time Line

August 31 - Financial Year End
September - Books complete and provided to Auditors
October - Audit complete
November 1st week - Annual General Meeting, audited statements distributed
November 2nd week - send notice of change of board members to Alberta Registries
December - receive forms from Alberta Registries. They pre-print our information on these forms, so waiting for them is better, but we could probably also download the blank forms from their website.
January 1st week - send completed forms to Alberta Registries

If for whatever reason the audit is not completed on time, we do have some slack. The audit can be completed after the AGM (but this should not be the normal practice). The auditor's statement then needs to be distributed to the members (e.g. by email) along with the financial statements (which might be in a corrected form).

The latest that we can have it in the hands of Alberta Registries is February 28. (Not just in the mail.) This is calculated as:

Our anniversary day of incorporation: January 22
Anniversary month: January
Month following anniversary month: February
End of that month: February 28

The wording in the legislation is a little obscure: "A society shall each year, on or before the last day of the month immediately following its anniversary month, make a return to the Registrar."