bookkeeping
3 steps to keep a non-profit chart of accounts simple...
A chart of accounts is a numbering system to organize a non-profit’s financial transactions. You can compare a chart of accounts to the Dewey Decimal System at your local library, where different groups of books have different number codes. In a non-profit, revenues have different number codes...
Easy Non-Profit Bookkeeping
No one tells a prospective executive director that a big part of running a non-profit is all the accounting. The ED is responsible for recording all the revenue that flows into the organization, all the payments that go out, and to make sure it all balances. No bookkeeper. If a non-profit...
Still using the traditional petty cash box in the boss’s office? How’s that working?
Petty cash is a small pool of money used for incidental expenses. Petty cash is different from a non-profit’s normal bill paying system because it is for much smaller amounts and for items that need to be purchased more occasionally. An example might include buying a couple of stamps at the...
Honest Actual Costs
I want you to compare two scenarios. In example #1, a new executive director is looking at the budget numbers for fundraising events for the last year. She doesn’t understand what she’s doing wrong. The cost for prizes is 25% more than it was in the years when her predecessor planned the...
Understand the Basic Financial Statements for Non-Profits
Each month a non-profit executive director will prepare basic financial statements for the board or finance committee to review. The statements need to be approved following the reporting process outlined in the organization’s policy. It is rare for a board to approve the monthly...
How to Make Non-Profit Deposits Easy and Accurate
Payments and registrations are coming in and, frankly, starting to pile up. People will not be happy if their cheques are not deposited right away. A deposit is needed, and some sort of log is required. Writing up the bank deposit page is only one piece of processing accounts receivable. Each...
5 Decisions Before Issuing Invoices so Everyone Follows the Same Procedure
Welcome back to our two-part series on invoices. There are two kinds of invoices a non-profit will encounter when handling bookkeeping. The first invoice is the one the non-profit receives and needs to pay. We talked about this last week and walked through the 4 steps to verify the purchase...
4 Steps Before Paying an Invoice to Ensure Expenses are Legit
When a volunteer or employee is new to a non-profit, or new to the world of non-profit bookkeeping, the learning curve can be steep, and everything can feel unfamiliar. In our personal lives, its easy to know if we need to pay the plumber, because we are very likely the one who arranged for...
Cover Pages for EVERY Accounting Transaction Creates Transparency
Digital or manual entry, the accounting for a non-profit will always produce a lot of paper. That paper trail will include the details for each financial transaction, be it an expense or revenue. It doesn’t matter how tidy the accounts are, if the supporting paperwork is messy, it will...
3 Thing to Do to Start a New Fiscal Year with Tidy Books and a Clear Budget
We’re into April now and if your non-profit is like mine, the annual audit is complete, and you are well on your way into a new fiscal year. It’s easy to get excited about new programs, and in my area, spring [yay, warmer weather]. But don’t forget about the previous year just yet. Rarely does...
Confidently Monitor Non-Profit Accounts
Ah, you’ve become a board member and you are learning the ropes. You joined a committee and recently you put up your hand to be added as a signer for the bookkeeping. The trip to the bank was easy enough, and maybe you thought you’d sign a few cheques, maybe a few deposits, but the signing...
Stale-Dated
Last week we talked about using a spreadsheet to keep track of the accounting for a smaller non-profit. This week let’s talk about a common bookkeeping challenge you might face when working on your non-profit’s accounts, the stale-dated cheque. Regardless of the bookkeeping method you...
Bragging Rights
Years ago, I volunteered for a non-profit that raised all their funds through a handful of different events. In addition to the money raised through tickets sales, memberships and merchandise were also sold at each of the events. This led to confusion about how to report the event revenue...
Past Due, Easy Bill Payment
The bills are coming in and you need to get cheques printed and in the mail. Where do you start? Here is an easy step-by-step process you can follow to ensure bill payment stays organized. Let’s get started. THE PAYMENT PACKAGE I like to treat each bill payment as an individual package....