Social accounting is the process of collecting information about the activities an organisation carries out which affect its stakeholders. These activities may be intended ‘outputs’ or just the day to day internal operations.

Organisations do not exist in a vacuum and the impact they have on their environment can be measured in three ways; triple bottom-line accounting.

These are: social, environmental and financial results.

Financial reporting has beenin use for hundreds of years and can be used to both show what has happened and as a planning tool. Social accounting enables this process to be carried out for social and environmental outputs.

Social accounting has been developed with an external, quality-assured audit process so that an organisation’s claims can be credible (proved) and used to demonstrate organisational development (improvement).

Social accounting is of great interest to organisations achieving results that cannot be reduced to numbers but can be verified objectively.