Accounting statistics for non-financial foundations

Operating income and operating expenses

Operating income and operating expenses are ordinary incomes and expenses except financial ones. Operating income is divided into sales revenues and other operating income. Regarding non-profit foundations, membership fees, contributions, donations and raised funds are also components of operating income. Operating expenses consist of used raw materials and consumables, changes in inventories, costs of asset acquisition, costs arising from the organisation’s objectives, wages and administrative expenses, depreciation and write-downs of fixed assets, and other operating expense. Ordinary depreciation concerns systematic depreciation of tangible fixed assets and intangible assets which deteriorate because of age and the like.

Financial income and financial expenses

Financial income and financial expenses are ordinary revenues and expenses relating to investments, securities, debtors and debts.

Taxes

Taxes represent taxes related to the accounting result, and consist of taxes payable, expected reimbursement claims from owners and changes in deferred taxes. Taxes are divided into taxes connected with ordinary result and tax expense connected with extraordinary items.

Fixed assets

Fixed assets mainly cover assets which are included in the foundations’ long-term value creation and which are intended for permanent use or ownership, and debtors and securities which are scheduled for repayment later than one year after the time of settlement. They include tangible fixed assets such as property, intangible assets such as research and development, and long-term investments.

Current assets

Current assets are assets which are connected with the foundations’ sale of goods and services, or which are expected to have a functional period of less than one year in operation. They are made up of cash and shot-term investments, debtors and inventories. Debtors are current assets if it has been agreed or scheduled that they will be repaid within one year after the end of the financial year.

Equity

Equity (net assets) is defined as the share of total assets belonging to the foundation, and is total assets minus liabilities.

Liabilities

Liabilities consist of all obligations which may restrict the foundation’s use of its resources in the future. Liabilities are composed of provisions for liabilities and charges, other long-term liabilities, and short-term liabilities. Long-term liabilities are legal or financial obligations not meant to be redeemed in the next accounting period, and are unrelated to the foundation’s short-term sales of goods and services. Short term liabilities are liabilities falling due for payment within one year from the time of settlement, or liabilities directly related to the foundation’s short-term sales of goods and services.

Key figures

The key figures provide information about the foundations’ capital strength and liquidity. Equity ratio expresses the capital strength of the foundation, i.e. its ability to withstand setbacks and losses. Current ratio is an indicator of the foundation’s ability to pay debt. Since current ratio is only measured at balance-sheet date, it has limited information about the current ability to pay debt.

Industrial classification is in accordance with the revised Norwegian Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 2007) based on the EU industrial classification NACE Rev. 2. Foundations operating in several fields are mainly grouped by the activity which contributes the most to the foundation’s overall added value.

Sector classification follows the standard Institutional Sector 2012.

Non-profit foundations may also be classified according to sphere of activity by the use of International Classification for Non-Profit Organizations (ICNPO codes.). The table below shows the ICNPO-categories:

Name: Accounting statistics for non-financial foundations.
Topic: Business & technology.

Division for Accounting Statistics and Business Register.

National level.

Frequency: Annually.

Timeliness: The statistics are published 10 months after the end of the fiscal year.

Not relevant

Collected and revised data are stored securely by Statistics Norway in compliance with applicable legislation on data processing.

Statistics Norway can grant access to the source data (de-identified or anonymised microdata) on which the statistics are based, for researchers and public authorities for the purposes of preparing statistical results and analyses. Access can be granted upon application and subject to conditions. Refer to the details about this at Access to data from Statistics Norway.

The purpose of accounting statistics for foundations is to obtain information for economic overviews and analyses to be used in research and national accounts. The statistics provide a basis for the comparison of foundations, including non-profit foundations, classified according to ICNPO codes, over time. For further information on ICNPO, see item 4.2.

The major users of the statistics are the Ministry of Culture, the National Account’s satellite accounts on non-financial foundations, voluntary organisations, and research foundations.

No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 08 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given in the Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of Statistics Norway’s key principles for ensuring that all users are treated equally.

Not relevant

The statistics are developed, produced and disseminated pursuant to Act no. 32 of 21 June 2019 relating to official statistics and Statistics Norway (the Statistics Act).

The data are collected from the Register of Company Accounts in Brønnøysund.

Not relevant

The statistics cover all foundations which are required to submit annual reports, and which have submitted annual reports when Statistics Norway collects the data. Only non-financial foundations are included in the statistics. Annual reports having serious flaws either in profit and loss account or the balance sheet are not included in the statistics. Annual reports for companies which are winding up are omitted, since the reports are not prepared under the going concern assumption and can consequently not be compared with other accounts.

A foundation is created when, by a will, an endowment, or other legal disposition, an asset is made available for a certain social, charitable, economic, educational, humanitarian, or other purpose. Privately established autonomous funds, bodies and legacies are also classified as foundations. Most foundations are not tax liable and do not therefore submit tax questionnaires on accounting. They are however obliged to submit annual reports, and do submit them to Brønnøysund.

The foundations’ financial situation, found in profit and loss account and the balance sheet, will be presented, their solidity and liquidity elucidated.

Census.

The Register of Companies in Brønnøysund prepares the annual reports before electronically submitting them to Statistics Norway. All the data being obtained from the Register of Companies in Brønnøysund, foundations have no response burden with regard to accounting statistics for foundations.

The Register of Companies in Brønnøysund and Statistics Norway check the annual reports manually and mechanically to ensure that the information is correctly recorded. More checks are carried out to make sure that there is consistency between some accounts in profit and loss account and the balance sheet.

The statistics are estimated by adding up a certain account, e.g. debtors, for all the units in the statistics.

Not relevant

Employees of Statistics Norway have a duty of confidentiality.

Statistics Norway does not publish figures if there is a risk of the respondent’s contribution being identified. This means that, as a general rule, figures are not published if fewer than three units form the basis of a cell in a table or if the contribution of one or two respondents constitutes a very large part of the cell total.

Statistics Norway can make exceptions to the general rule if deemed necessary to meet the requirements of the EEA agreement, if the respondent is a public authority, if the respondent has consented to this, or when the information disclosed is openly accessible to the public.

More information can be found on Statistics Norway’s website under Methods in official statistics, in the ‘Confidentiality’ section.

The total amounts in the statistics are comparable from 2008.

Errors can arise when the data are being registered or processed at Statistics Norway or at the Register of Accounts in Brønnøysund.

The degree of specification in the profit and loss accounts and the balance sheets varies from annual report to annual report. Although a standard chart of accounts specifying items is established by accounting legislation, different items may nevertheless be combined, if a more clearly set out annual report may result from that. In addition to that heterogeneity in the data, the contents of particular items may vary according to the activity to which the foundation belongs.

As regards the foundations which do not follow calendar year, it is the account closed in the calendar year which is covered by the statistics.

Not all annual reports are available when the statistics are produced. Therefore, the data are incomplete.

The statistics are based on census and do not therefore have uncertainties concerning sampling variance and non-response, with which sample surveys are encumbered.

The statistics are among other things based on information from registers at a given point in time, while both administrative and statistical registers are continually updated and are consequently changed when the statistics are being produced.

A revision is a planned change to figures that have already been published, for example when releasing final figures as a follow-up to published preliminary figures. See also Statistics Norway’s principles for revisions.