Recently we noticed an enviable problem with several of our clients. What to do with all that cash piling up? Here are stories of three nonprofits with too much cash and how they handled it. At the end of the post we provide more information about reserves and quasi endowment. Organization #1 The first organization…
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Recently a client came to us with a question about whether she should capitalize or expense a new interior door that replaced an old door within their building. The new door was heavy duty, fire resistant, and contained a window to facilitate monitoring of vulnerable clients. It was much more expensive than the standard door…
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Recently Carol sat down with Lynda (not her real name), an executive director who brought bookkeeping in-house in 2018 for the nonprofit organization she leads. We worked closely with Lynda to help her manage the transition. Now that the monthly bookkeeping process has settled into more of a routine, we took a few minutes to…
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UPDATE: Effective December 20, 2019, the “Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2019” retroactively repealed the wildly unpopular tax on parking fringe benefits provided by nonprofit employers. BLOG POST BELOW IS PROVIDED FOR HISTORICAL REFERENCE ONLY Yes, starting Jan. 1, 2018, Congress is implementing a nonprofit parking tax. Hidden in the 2017 Tax…
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Summary sales receipts have long been a “go to” accounting trick for restaurants and retail stores. By using a summary sales receipt, a business can easily enter a summary of the day’s sales and methods of payment into the accounting system. But did you know this technique can also be used by nonprofits? How a…
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Organizations use various types software to help manage customers and the revenue process. But that software is often disconnected from the accounting system. Customer and revenue software programs fall into three major categories: Industry-specific customer relationship management (CRM) software. Examples include: ProCare – for child care centers VETbuddy – for veterinarian clinics TherapyNotes – for…
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Transfers between bank accounts often trip people up in QuickBooks. Here are some of the errors we see: Coding a transfer out of a bank account as an expense and coding the deposit into the receiving bank account as income. Duplicate entry of the transfer – by posting the transfer separately in each of the…
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“We’d like to have our accounting take an hour a week instead of 10 hours.” Amy, the executive director of a five-year-old human services organization, poured out her frustration. “Our volunteer accountant says she is willing to put in about an hour a week, but if it’s going to be 10 hours she is leaving.”…
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Does your organization have more than one major program service? You get a chance to show off the accomplishments of your organization’s top programs in Form 990. Part III of Form 990 contains three generous spaces to write a description of accomplishments for your organization’s top three programs. If you really have a lot going…
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Over the course of this year we have taken you along on a Chart of Accounts Grand Tour (with a few detours here and there!) We hope you have enjoyed it. As we wrap up 2018, we want to leave you with a “map” of the accounts we visited. We provided a table of blog…
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