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Nonprofits
A healthy looking balance can be mostly restricted, committed to a program that has not started yet, or a grant you will have to return part of if the work does not happen. Books that show one number cannot tell you which, and that is the question every executive director and board treasurer is actually asking.
We track restrictions where they belong, in the accounting system rather than in a spreadsheet somebody maintains from memory, allocate expenses across program, management and fundraising as they happen, and produce statements your board can read without a translator.
These are the ones we find in almost every file we take over.
The accounting system shows one pot of money and someone tracks what is restricted on the side. When that person is busy, or leaves, the organization loses the only record of what it is allowed to spend.
Result: nobody can say what is genuinely available.
Expenses go in by type all year, then someone estimates the program, management and fundraising split in a hurry at year end. Grant applications and the 990 then rest on a number that was largely guessed.
Result: figures you cannot defend to a funder.
A $100 online donation lands as about $97 after processing. Booking the net understates contributions, hides what your donation platform costs, and puts the books out of step with the acknowledgment the donor received.
Result: your donor system and your books disagree.
What's included
We work in QuickBooks Online and Xero, and reconcile to whatever donor system you already use rather than asking you to change it.
Organizations with roughly $250K to $10M in annual revenue, a handful of staff, and enough restricted funding that keeping it straight has become somebody's second job.
A restricted gift is revenue when you receive it, but you cannot spend it on anything you like. It stays in net assets with donor restrictions until the purpose is satisfied, and only then does it move across.
That timing is what makes nonprofit books feel like they are lying to you. A large multi-year grant arrives and the year shows an enormous surplus. The following year you deliver the program, spend the money, and show a deficit. Neither number describes how the organization is actually doing, and a board that has not been walked through it will draw the wrong conclusion from both.
We keep the restrictions in the accounting system, release them as the work happens, and report unrestricted operating results separately, so you can see whether the organization covers its own costs before the grants are counted.
Unspent funding heading toward a deadline is something you want to hear about in month four, not month eleven.
Three steps, and the first two cost you nothing.
Your programs, your funding mix, how many restricted grants you carry, and what your board keeps asking for.
A flat monthly price in writing, plus a separate one-time fee if the funds have to be untangled first.
Funds and programs structured properly, the allocation method agreed, then your first board-ready statements.
Said up front, so nobody finds out in month three.
No. The 990 is a tax filing and it belongs with a CPA or a preparer who does them regularly. What we do is make sure the numbers they work from are right.
That matters more than it sounds. The 990 asks for expenses split by program, management and fundraising. If that split has been done properly all year rather than estimated in a hurry, the filing becomes straightforward and the figures hold up if a funder asks about them.
Yes, and we would rather you kept the one your development team already knows. We reconcile it to the accounting system so gift records and financial records agree, which is the thing that usually goes wrong.
The mismatch normally comes from processing fees and from timing, where a gift is dated when it was made in one system and when it was deposited in the other. Both are fixable once someone is actually looking at them each month.
We can get you ready for one and work alongside your auditor, but we cannot perform it. An auditor has to be independent of whoever keeps the books, so a firm doing both is not something you want.
What we do is keep the file in a state where the audit is not a crisis: reconciled accounts, documented restrictions, a consistent allocation method, and support filed where it can be found.
With a documented method we agree with you at the start and then apply the same way every month. Usually that is staff time for salaries and related costs, and square footage or headcount for occupancy and shared overhead.
Consistency is what makes it defensible. A method you can explain to a funder in one sentence is worth far more than a more elaborate one nobody can reconstruct a year later.
That is who we write them for. Most board treasurers are generous people with day jobs, not accountants, and handing them a statement of activities with no explanation is how boards end up asking the same three questions every quarter.
You get a short written summary with the statements, and we are happy to join a board or finance committee meeting when it helps.
Sometimes not, and we will tell you. An organization under a couple of hundred thousand with two or three unrestricted funding sources can often manage with a good volunteer and a well set up file, and we would rather help you get there than sell you something you do not need.
It becomes worth it when restricted grants arrive, when staff are paid across more than one program, or when a funder starts asking for reporting you cannot easily produce.
Twenty minutes on the phone and you'll have a flat quote within a day.