Books of account and other documents to be kept and maintained by a registered non-profit organisation

What to keep (sub-rule 1).

• Books of account: cash book, ledger, journal, copies of bills and receipts (serially numbered), original bills and receipts for payments, and any other book needed to give a true and fair view; kept separately for any business undertaking under section 344 and for other business the organisation carries on.
• Other documents: a record of all projects and institutions with names, addresses and objectives; a record of income by source (charitable or religious activity, property, deposits and investments, voluntary contributions, permitted commercial activity, specified income under section 337, and residual income under section 355(j)); a record of application of income in India and outside India (with amounts, names, addresses and objects), amounts credited or paid to other registered organisations, deemed application under section 341(5), income accumulated under section 342(1) with its purpose, and money invested in the modes in section 350 and in other modes; the same records for income of earlier years; records of corpus donations (donor name, address, PAN and Aadhaar if available, application, investments, and amounts passed to other registered organisations), including donations for renovation or repair of a temple, mosque, gurdwara, church or other notified place treated as corpus under section 340; records of loans and borrowings and their application and repayment; records of immovable and movable properties; records of related persons under section 355(h) and transactions with them; and any other relevant document.

Form, place and period (sub-rules 2 to 6). The records may be kept in written, electronic, digital or printout form. They are kept at the registered office, or at another place in India decided by a management resolution, in which case the organisation tells the jurisdictional Assessing Officer in writing within seven days, with the full address, signed and verified by the person authorised to verify the return. They are kept for six years from the end of the relevant tax year, and where an assessment is reopened under section 279 within the period in section 282, the records at the time of reopening are kept until the reopened assessment becomes final.