Tallis — Bookkeeping for Small Charities

Many small charities struggle to recruit experienced bookkeepers to maintain accurate records of their income and expenditure, and the prospect of preparing end-of-year accounts for the Charity Commission can be daunting.

Tallis offers a straightforward solution. I can act as your treasurer, maintaining your accounts on a central database that your trustees and members can view at any time through a user-friendly, read-only web portal. No accounting knowledge is required to see every transaction posted across all your funds and accounts.

Security is built in. The portal is password-protected, all information is transmitted over a secure HTTPS connection, and direct access to the accounts database is restricted to holders of a private SSH key.

About me

My name is Brian McGill. For nearly six years I have kept the computerised accounts for the Bee Sanctuary Movement, a charity dedicated to redeveloping green spaces for the benefit of bees and other pollinating insects.

I hold a degree in Computer Science from the University of Warwick and have passed all Level 4 examinations with the Association of Accounting Technicians. I am currently studying full-stack web development (JavaScript) online with the University of Helsinki.

Two people who know my work well have kindly offered their views. My colleague Sheila said:

“Brian was the natural choice to become our Treasurer. He is not only knowledgeable about financial accounting but consistently diligent in everything he does.”

My accountancy tutor Stephen added:

“Brian is compassionate and shows a high level of understanding.”

The software

I have developed bespoke accounting software designed specifically for small charities — organisations that do not need full accruals packages such as Sage or GnuCash, but that still need to distinguish between restricted and unrestricted funds rather than simply between bank and cash accounts. At the end of the financial year I can provide Receipts and Payments accounts together with a Statement of Assets and Liabilities, in full conformance with Charity Commission guidelines.

Trust and transparency

Acting as your treasurer requires access to your bank accounts, and I understand that this calls for a high degree of trust. I would encourage you to speak with my colleagues personally before engaging my services. I am happy to be fully transparent and will provide a DBS certificate on request. You are also welcome to a guided tour of the Tallis Ledger Web software, at your premises or mine, so that you can satisfy yourself of its legitimacy.

You can see examples of my work at beesanctuarymovement.org: scroll to the footer to download our annual reports.

Fees

I provide bookkeeping support to small charities entirely free of charge. This is voluntary work rather than a commercial service — I do not operate as a business and accept no payment for my time. On occasion I may ask a charity to reimburse genuine out-of-pocket expenses incurred on its behalf, and I will always provide receipts for any such costs.

If this has caught your interest, I would be glad to hear from you. You can find out more about me on GitHub or LinkedIn.

You can reach out to me at brian@beesanctuarymovement.org.