office operations
Can an employee expect privacy at work?
Office environments have changed over the last few years. We went from working in a central office to being required to work from home during the pandemic. When it was finally allowed to go back to work in a central office, many employees continued to work from home or embraced varying...
3 Steps to Get Ready for Holiday Office Closure
The holidays are right around the corner and taking time off from work can provide a much-needed break. Whether a non-profit closes for one week, two weeks, or a set number of days, a holiday office closure isn’t a simple weekend, with everyone back at their desks on Monday. The longer time...
Filing System Basics for Non-Profits
I remember a conversation I had with a colleague from another organization. She confessed she had all her hard copy files in order but didn’t really understand how to make a computer filing system. Whenever she created a document on the computer, she would print a hard copy for filing but leave...
Is a Time Sheet Needed for a Salaried Employee?
Its easy to think time sheets are only for hourly employees that work a shift, no more, no less. Salaried employees often have an unwritten expectation to ‘just get the job done’ no matter how long it takes. But that’s a system that favours the employer and can quickly burn out an employee. If...
The Emergency Red Binder – Peace of Mind for HR Emergencies
What is the emergency red binder? Let’s imagine you’ve just won the lottery (sigh); 60 million dollars in your name, received the very day after the board chair chewed you out over a trivial matter. Think you’ll give two months’ notice before you leave? I think we’re talking more about a text...
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...
Learn to Process Hard Copy Mail Efficiently
One of the surprisingly intimidating pieces of running a non-profit is the processing of the good ol' hard copy daily mail. It arrives every weekday and is filled with a combination of payments, bills, correspondence, miscellaneous, and junk. Let it go too long, and it can feel like a mountain...
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...
Easy Non-Profit Financial Filing System
It’s a typical non-profit office day and you are working on the accounts. Let’s imagine you’ve paid a bunch of bills, entering each one into your accounting software. Let’s also imagine you’ve opened the mail and there are a few receipts as well as a grant payment. And finally, you create a...
Keeping Employee Files
Your non-profit likely has a privacy policy. If your non-profit has a web site, you for sure have a privacy policy. The policy talks about how you will collect and store information about your customers, clients, and maybe stakeholders. But have you thought about a privacy policy as it pertains...
What the heck is petty cash?
Petty cash is a small pool money used for incidental expenses. Petty cash is different from the 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 post office...
Happy New Year 2020
Welcome 2020, it's going to be a great year. Quite a few years ago, I worked for a boss who was the absolute definition of horrible. In every way, he made my life a nightmare. It was my sincere pleasure to finally get to a point when I could safely quit my job and move on. The problem? I...
Housekeeping
Today I was answering a handful of questions from a new board member who is one of the signers for financial documents. One of her questions was around a purchasing practice that we’ve been doing for almost a decade. She’s new to her role and wasn’t familiar with this specific practice; and good...