Nonprofit Reports - How to Complete Them Sooner Each Month_8224

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Nonprofit Reports - How to Complete Them Sooner Each Month,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
A nonprofit's monthly financial statements communicate critical information to the executive director and the board. Sometimes, these readers can be so eager to see the year-to-date results that they want accountants to by-pass procedures they believe must be performed to avoid distributing misleading information. Here are some common problems accountants experience, as well as some ways to speed up completion of the financials without compromising important procedures.
Waiting for bank statments to arrive: Sometimes,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, your checking account statement doesn't arrive in the mail for a week after month-end, and you have to hold up other procedures because you haven't reconciled your accounting records to the bank. But you don't have to wait anymore! Thanks to internet banking, you can have access to the checking account on-line. Internal controls over cash are not compromised if you have read-only access.
Waiting for invoices to come in the mail: First, estimate the amount due on each invoice you're waiting for and decide whether that amount will have a material effect on the results of operations. If an invoice is small, ignore it and don't post anything. If the amount is too big to ignore, contact the vendor and request an estimate or an electronic version of the invoice. Post estimates to Accrued Expenses rather than Accounts Payable, and reverse the entries on the first of the following month. When you get the bills, post them to AP as you normally would.
Difficulty with a reconciliation: Some accounts need to be reconciled before you issue financial statements - these are the ones where missing or incorrect data would cause managers to make different decisions than they would if that data were included or correct. But if only small amounts are involved - $50 here or $5 there - the financial reports will be just as useful before the reconciliations are done as they will afterwards. Weigh the benefits of timely reporting against the benefits of absolute accuracy, the disadvantages of missing information against those of tardiness.
Gathering receipts and other back-up for credit card purchases or travel expenses: Sometimes, receipts and coding guidance for charges to cards entrusted to employees is missing when it's time to close the month or pay the bill. In order not to hold up financial statements, post debits for missing charges on employee cards to Employee Receivables so they appear on the balance sheet as an asset. Think about them as rough equivalents to cash advances for travel. Once you have the receipts in hand, you can journal-entry them to the appropriate expense account.
Vendor invoices missing expense coding, or with coding that's wrong: It's worth your time to get accurate and complete expense coding - account,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, program, and funding source - before you post transactions. You can help managers and others get it right by using a custom-made rubber stamp that has a blank space where they are to write each bit of data that you need. Or you can set up a purchase order system,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, which requires the coding to be provided before a purchase is approved.
Requests for reports or projects at the last minute: It's hard to say no to your boss, so urgent requests can be difficult to manage and often lead to overtime. It helps to know what's coming up, so be proactive. Make sure you have a calendar showing when grant or project reports are due. At month-end before the closing process starts in earnest, ask your executive director about other requests that may hit your desk in the next week or two.
Smoothing the road to a quicker monthly close isn't likely to be accomplished all at once. Take on what seems to be the easiest task first and move on to the more difficult ones later. It won't be long before you see results that make the effort worth it!
Are you curious to learn more about the support that's available to you in nonprofit accounting? Remember to order the bonus article on how to prevent fraud by Nancy Church of Not-for-Profit Accounting Help.
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