ABDO made a loss of £321,116 in the last calendar year, its 2009 annual report has revealed.

However, the loss has been put down to a series of coincidences affecting its business for the financial year to December 31 2009, and the professional body has promised to return to profit in the near future.

The annual report, released last week, attributes the loss to a ‘reduction in examination income due to delayed sittings, increased compliance expenditure in connection with exams and tough economic conditions, leading to income from the 2009 conference being less than expected.’

In 2008 ABDO posted a small profit of £322, with the main difference between the two sets of accounts being a £320,386 increase in its operating loss during last year.

General secretary of ABDO, Anthony Garrett (pictured), explained the losses as being due to an “unfortunate chain of coincidences,” he told OT, “£120,000 of exam income which normally would have come in before the end of the year arrived in March of this year, for a variety of reasons, and will be included in next year’s report. Then there was a one-off charge for a complete revision of the exams in line with the GOC rules so we had to pay for things like examiners’ time, holding dummy exams and all the costs associated with that, a hit of £100,000. A general drop in income caused a major deficit for the year.”

He added that the loss last year would be offset by a ‘substantial profit’ this year as a result of delayed income from the 2009 exams being added to its 2010 bottom line and he hopes that this, along with an economic upturn, will allow ABDO’s accounts to be back where they were at the end of 2008 by the end of next year.

“Our aim as a membership organisation is to not hold a large surplus and maintain a small profit year-on-year, which we expect to be back to within two years,” he concluded.

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