Singapore Nonprofit Chart of Accounts for Xero: Donations and GST

Singapore charity finance turns on a distinction that surprises new treasurers: a charity can be deep in the GST system even though most of what it does is given away for free. Registration is driven by taxable supplies, input-tax recovery is limited to those supplies, and donations and grants sit outside GST entirely. This is a Singapore nonprofit chart of accounts built for Xero, with those lines coded in. It ships as a readable reference (CSV) and a Xero import CSV.

Donations and grants are outside GST

A pure donation, where the giver gets nothing in return, and grant income are both outside the scope of GST, and neither counts toward the S$1 million registration threshold. So the chart carries donations received and grant income revenue accounts, both defaulting to No Tax. Keeping them out of the taxable-supplies figure matters, because a charity funded mainly by donations can still cross the registration line through a modest trading arm, and the threshold test looks only at the taxable part.

The taxable side: fundraising and memberships

Not everything a charity receives is outside GST. An event with a benefit to attendees, a gala dinner, a paid workshop, is a taxable supply, so fundraising event income defaults to Standard-Rated Supplies. Membership subscriptions default to standard-rated where members get benefits, with Regulation 33 Exempt Supplies listed for subscriptions that carry none. These taxable lines are what can push a mostly-free charity over the registration threshold.

Input tax recovery only on taxable work

Once registered, a charity recovers only the input tax attributable to its taxable business supplies. Costs used wholly for free or non-business activities are not claimable, and shared overheads sit in between and must be apportioned on a fair basis agreed with IRAS. The chart flags this directly: programme and beneficiary costs carries a note that its input tax is not fully recoverable, while volunteer and event costs and grants and donations made are coded to reflect their nature (the grants made default to No Tax, being outside scope). Because most charities are dominated by free activity, over-claiming on shared costs is the common error, so the discipline is recording, against each cost, what activity it supports.

IPC status is a separate, donor-side matter

Institution of a public character status lets donors claim a tax deduction. It does not change the charity’s own input-tax position, and it has no place in the expense workflow. The chart keeps the charity’s costs and the donor reliefs apart, because conflating them is the usual mistake.

How to use it

1. Open the CSV: each account carries its class, a default Xero GST code, the other valid codes, and a note. The donation, grant, fundraising, and programme accounts are the nonprofit additions.
2. In Xero, go to Accounting, then Chart of accounts, then Import, and upload the CSV, into a demo org first.
3. Confirm the Singapore tax rates exist in your org.
4. Record against each shared cost which activity it supports, so the year-end input-tax apportionment rests on actual use, not an estimate.

The recurring work is a documented ledger across free and taxable activity:

• Dext pulls recurring supplier bills into the file.
• ExpenseFlow reads each receipt and supplier invoice, flags blocked input tax and overseas-supplier purchases, and flags costs coded to a free or non-business activity as not fully claimable, then posts the transaction into Xero against the right account.
• Aplos and similar fund-accounting tools handle restricted-fund reporting alongside.

The chart cannot run the input-tax apportionment, decide which supplies are taxable, or determine IPC status: those depend on the charity’s activities and approvals and are matters for the finance committee or charity accountant. What it removes is the manual keying, leaving a clean ledger for those judgements.

On QuickBooks instead? See the Singapore nonprofit chart of accounts for QuickBooks. For the full GST picture, see the Singapore nonprofit expenses guide.