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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“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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In most countries, checks have “gone the way of the fax machine and rotary telephone.” (Bloomberg, “Why Can’t Americans Ditch Checks?” July 26, 2017). Our Chart of Accounts Grand Tour continues to explore Cash, the first account on your balance sheet, as we look at options to manage cash payments electronically. Intuit makes it very…
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Nonprofit bookkeeping is simply coding transactions to the chart of accounts. What could possibly go wrong? Based on the questions we receive and the nonprofit clients we help, apparently a lot! Accounts Are Mandatory Every transaction recorded in your nonprofit’s QuickBooks (or other accounting software) must be coded to two or more accounts in your…
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It’s a new year and a chance to give your nonprofit accounting a fresh start. Right? Not so fast. If your year for accounting purposes is the calendar year (as opposed to a fiscal year ending in a month other than December), your profit and loss report starts out in 2018 with fresh, clean accounts…
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In our last post, The Art of Creating a Nonprofit Chart of Accounts – Part 1 of 2, we talked about why the chart of accounts is so important. This is true whether you use QuickBooks or any other accounting software. We also gave examples of good and bad uses for accounts. In this post…
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In our last post, Lists: Key to Getting the Most Out of QuickBooks for Nonprofits, we walked you through an overview of QuickBooks’ lists and how they can help you with better record keeping and reporting. While all the lists in QuickBooks have a role to play, the most important one is the chart of…
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If you’ve been using QuickBooks for a while, you may be frustrated over how to enter transactions so you get meaningful reports. The key to good reports starts with understanding and using QuickBooks’ lists. Today we want to give you a brief overview of QuickBooks’ most important lists. Effectively using QuickBooks’ lists is the key…
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If you are like most nonprofits, paying people for services is your largest expense. It’s not unusual for payroll and contractor payments to make up 80% or more of total expenses. It’s also an area with many tax compliance issues and bookkeeping challenges. Consider what combination of accounting software and payroll software and/or services would…
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No one starts a nonprofit because they want to do accounting. But sooner or later, you realize you need some sort of accounting solution if your nonprofit is to succeed. In case you are wondering what accounting can do for you, see our post “12 Ways Accounting Can Make You an Awesome Nonprofit Manager.” If…
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