Not-for-Profit Accounting Help eNewsletter
June 7, 2010 #98
Nancy Church, CPA
www.NFPAccountingHelp.org
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Contents
1. Not-for-Profit Accounting Help’s Resources
2. Feature: Managing Expectations: Accounting and Development
3. About the Not-for-Profit Accounting Help eNewsletter
1. Not-for-Profit Accounting Help’s Resources
The Book: Do you want an accounting guide that not only tells you what to do but how to do it? Buy Not-for-Profit Accounting Help: A Very Practical Manual for Bookkeepers, Accountants, and Finance Directors of Small Nonprofits (second edition) at www.NFPAccountingHelp.org as a downloadable .pdf or as a spiral-bound full-size paperback. It’s both a guide to the complex world of accounting for nonprofits and a resource you can keep close at hand to answer your questions as they come up.
The First 100 is a collection of 100 articles from newsletters over a period of three years. They are as relevant today as they were when they were written. You can get it as a .pdf document in the on-line store at www.NFPAccountingHelp.org.
The Website:You’ll find the most recent issue of the newsletter posted at www.NFPAccountingHelp.org. There’s a record retention guide, a sample chart of accounts, and a chapter from the book there, too.
The Blog: Read a condensed version of the newsletter topic of the week and comment or pose questions for the Not-for-Profit Accounting Help community of readers at www.NonprofitAccountingHelp.org.
2. Feature: Managing Expectations: Accounting and Development
A couple of months ago, I asked you all to send me stories of success or frustration concerning your relationship with your fund development department. I was planning to present to a group of development folks here in Portland, discussing ways to improve relationships between accounting and development. I spoke to a break-out session at the conference, and about 25 people attended. It was a congenial and attentive group. Thanks very much to the twenty or so readers who responded; your contributions were very helpful.
I’ve found over the years that expectations of others can often be out of line with what those others intend, and I think this human phenomenon is at the root of some of the difficulties we experience in working with development. So I included in my presentation a list of things I think are reasonable to expect from an organization’s accountants and a list of what accountants will likely expect from development. Here they are:
What You Can Expect from Your Accountant
· Monthly financial statements a couple of weeks (no more than three unless there are special circumstances) after the close of the month
· Guidance in preparing budgets for grant proposals
· Guidance in preparing annual budgets
· Reports to grantors or other funders showing expenses charged to those grants
· Assistance in reconciling your records with theirs right after month-end
· Assistance in recording development transactions in accordance with GAAP
· Assistance in designing your system so that it will be able to:
Produce data that is ready to be entered into the accounting system
And report in ways that satisfy the needs of the organization and of your department
· Assistance in negotiating contracts (e.g. administrative % in addition to program expenses)
What Your Accountant Will Expect from You
· Organized files and access to them
· Nonjudgmental acknowledgment that accounting standards may be different from your department’s standards for recording gifts, pledges and promises to give, and that these differences necessitate working together to make both systems function efficiently and well
· Cooperation in designing systems for processing donations, client service fees, invoices to funding agencies, and grant or contract award letters
· That grant or contract budgets you prepare conform to the accounting system as to line items and program activities
· An opportunity to, at a minimum, read grant proposals before you have finalized them and sent them off
· Copies of award letters as soon as they come in
· Understanding of date sensitivity in your system/reports and how that affects accounting; after a month has been reported on, you must make corrections in a subsequent month.
· Consistently prepared reports (I have rarely worked with a Development Dept that could produce the same report two months in a row from their software)
What do you think? Did I leave anything out, or include anything that you don’t think should be here?
3. About the Not-for-Profit Accounting Help! eNewsletter
NFPAccountingHelp’s enewsletter serves nonprofit organizations by providing practical, sound advice for staff and volunteers responsible for bookkeeping, accounting, reporting and financial or administrative oversight.
You can share the newsletter with others, or use one of the articles. Just acknowledge where you got it: www.NFPAccountingHelp.org.
Your comments and responses or requests for articles on certain topics make my day. Send them to: Nancy@NFPAccountingHelp.org.
- Nancy