The Air Travel Organiser’s Licence (ATOL) Scheme is a statutory system covering most travel providers who sell air travel. Its purpose is to protect the public from losing money or being stranded abroad because the travel provider that they have booked to travel with fails.
An ATOL holder is required to provide some financial data from their profit and loss and balance sheet statements (or other equivalent financial statements) to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The ATOL holder will need to enter this data into Part 2 of the Annual Accountants Report (AAR) for the ‘ATOL Reporting Accountant (ARA)’ to report on.
All ATOL reporting needs to be signed by an ARA from 1 April 2016 onwards. ARA means a firm or individual who is designated under the ATOL Reporting Accountants’ Scheme (ARA Scheme) and who is engaged by the ATOL holder to report on information provided by the ATOL holder to the CAA.
Further to our specialism in this area, we are delighted to have been registered and licensed by ICAEW to be ATOL Reporting Accountants (ARA’s) and carry out such work.
Accountants, like CRM, will need to be a designated ARA to provide ATOL reporting in future. The scheme has been developed by the CAA in order to help improve the standard of ATOL reporting and to provide assurance that financial information which is submitted on behalf of ATOL holders is accurate. The scheme is designed to ensure that designated accountants of participating bodies are sufficiently knowledgeable about both the industry and specific requirements of ATOL to provide the required assurance needed by the CAA.
The ARA Scheme has been set up by the CAA and the professional accountancy bodies under agreement to ensure competent ATOL Reporting.
If we can support you with your reporting, then please do not hesitate to contact us.
