The management report for the Third Sector Entities: reflections and proposals
Abstract
As of 2021, all nonprofit entities must publish their financial statements, are composed of a balance sheet, a management report, and a mission report (smaller entities are allowed to publish a cash statement only), in compliance with a ministerial decree that approved such mandatory financial statements schemes.
The paper objective is to focus on the management report and to offer a contribution with regard to the accounting and management issues relating to the mandatory schemes adopted for this document. Particularly, the authors provide several ideas and operational solutions to accounting problems, and they also provide information opportunities resulting from the choice made in opting for a document organized by management areas.
This poses the problem of comparison/connection between the tools of planning, programming, and control; those of performance evaluation; and those of external reporting as a central point of view.
Even with all the necessary precautions, given the complexity and relative novelty of the tools in question, for third sector entities (and in particular for those that operate mainly due to external support) there should not be an a priori dichotomy between the internal tools of planning, scheduling, control, and evaluation of the company performance and the tools for overall reporting (accounting and social) aimed at illustrating the methods and outcomes of the company actions implemented to follow the statutory purposes.
Keywords: Nonprofit entities, Third sector, Management reporting, Financial analysis, Accountability
