Change the trustees of a Pune society and a 90 day clock starts. Report the change to the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner inside that window and the Register of Public Trusts follows your minutes. Let it lapse and the register keeps naming people who have already left. That register, not your minute book, is what a bank, a landlord or a grant office reads when it asks who signs. The registering officer can extend the period on sufficient cause, but you are then explaining a delay instead of filing a report. Annual compliance is simply the habit that keeps this from happening.
Which registration decides your society's compliance year?
Most Pune NGOs hold two registrations and have to service both. A charitable society registered under the Societies Registration Act 1860 is also a public trust under the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act 1950. The same organisation therefore carries a society record and an entry in the Register of Public Trusts.
Settle three things before anything is drafted.
- Which registrations the society actually holds, and whether the society record and the public trust entry agree on trustees, address and objects.
- When the last change of trustees, address or objects took effect, because every reporting date runs from that date and not from the meeting that noticed it.
- Whether the society employs anyone, because a payroll pulls in a separate stack of Maharashtra filings that has nothing to do with the Charity Commissioner.
A society that stops at the 1860 Act registration is incomplete here. The gap usually surfaces at the worst moment, when a donor or a bank asks for a current extract.
What does a Pune society have to put together?
The paperwork for a compliance year is mostly your own records, in order and dated.
- The registration certificate, the memorandum and the rules, with every amendment the society has adopted since.
- The current list of trustees or managing committee members, with the resolution behind each change and the date it took effect.
- Minutes of the general body and committee meetings held during the year, signed.
- Bank statements and the income and expenditure record for the financial year, with the receipts behind any large item.
- Title or occupancy documents for immovable property, because a change touching property also needs a memorandum to the sub registrar.
- The PTEC and PTRC certificates and the Shops and Establishments certificate, with the expiry date on the last of them.
Societies come to us with two of these six and a shoebox. That is normal, and the first week of the engagement is spent turning it into a file.
What does society annual compliance cost in Pune?
| Component | What it covers | Paid to |
|---|---|---|
| Professional fee, from ₹3,499 | File review, change reports, resolutions and the year's accounts | LegalX India |
| Charity Commissioner fees | The fees the rules prescribe for the filings your society actually makes | The state, at actuals |
| PTEC | ₹2,500 a year where the society employs more than two people | Maharashtra, on mahagst.gov.in |
| Shops Act renewal | No fee is prescribed under the Act and rules, only the electronic service charge | The state Labour Department |
The professional fee is fixed when we scope the year. Government fees are billed at actuals against the receipt. The rules set them per filing, and we will not quote a figure before we know which filings your society needs. PTEC is not our fee at all; it is the society's own tax and it goes straight to the state.
How the annual filing runs, step by step
- We pull the society's current entries and read them against your minutes, resolutions and bank record.
- We list every reportable change and date it, then work out which ones are inside their window and which need an explanation.
- We draft the change reports, the supporting resolutions and the accounts for the year.
- We file with the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner for your region, online at charity.maharashtra.gov.in.
- We close the state side, PTEC before 31 March and the PTRC returns where there is a payroll, and hand over a dated calendar for the next year.
Which office receives the filing, and where does a Pune society sit afterwards?
The Charity Commissioner's organisation is built region wise, and Pune is one of ten Joint Charity Commissioner regions. The Pune office is the Public Trusts Registration Office, Pune. It is staffed by a Joint Charity Commissioner, a Deputy Charity Commissioner and three Assistant Charity Commissioners, and the region's subordinate offices sit at Ahilyanagar, Satara and Solapur.
A change report goes to the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner of the region or sub region in whose limits the trustees keep an office for the trust, or where the trust property lies. So the society's own address decides the desk. Two Pune societies, one in Hadapsar and one in Camp, can be working entirely different files at the same counter.
The society side sits in the same house. The Registrar of Societies works under the Law and Judiciary Department within the Charity Commissioner's organisation, with delivery online, so one body keeps both records. Where a change touches immovable property, a further memorandum goes to the sub registrar. Pune city registers through the numbered Haveli offices, not one counter for the whole city.
What else does a Pune society owe through the year?
The Charity Commissioner file is only half of it. The Maharashtra registrations run on their own dates and nothing prompts you.
- PTEC is the society's own profession tax, ₹2,500 a year where it employs more than two people, payable on or before 31 March, with no return to file.
- PTRC is a separate certificate doing a separate job, the authority to deduct profession tax from salaries and pay it over, at ₹200 a month with ₹300 in February.
- Women earning up to ₹25,000 a month have been outside that salary deduction since 1 April 2023, and the PTRC return dates moved forward by fifteen days in 2026.
- The Maharashtra Shops and Establishments Act 2017 names a society registered under the 1860 Act, and a charitable trust, as establishments in terms. Registration is online to the Facilitator in the state Labour Department, and the certificate runs for the period asked for, capped at ten years, with renewal applied for at least 30 days before it expires.
- Maharashtra raised the registration threshold to 20 workers with effect from 1 October 2025, below which an establishment gives an intimation instead. That change came in by ordinance, so we confirm the position in force on the day we file.
- Once there is a payroll, provident fund coverage begins at 20 employees. The Maharashtra Labour Welfare Fund also takes a small half yearly contribution from employer and employee, which we put on your calendar.
Who is filing society annual compliance in Pune right now?
- An NGO founder in Camp whose society took on two paid coordinators last year. It now needs PTEC for the society, PTRC for the payroll and a Shops Act certificate it never held.
- A wholesale trader in Camp who sits on his family's charitable society committee. He has been signing for a register entry that still names a trustee who died in 2023.
- A society in Kothrud that moved its office, reported nothing for two years, and met the change report again on a grant application checklist.
- A welfare society in Shivajinagar that owns its premises, where a change in trustees now has to reach the sub registrar by memorandum as well.
Why LegalX India in Pune
Our office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006, and the whole file runs online with CA and CS support. Your society's own registered address decides which Charity Commissioner desk and which Facilitator you answer to, never ours. Behind the work sit 50+ experts and a 4.8 Google rating, and you get a callback within 30 minutes with a fixed quote instead of an estimate. For the position across the country, read the national society annual compliance guide.