The only way not-for-profits can build up their net assets is to make more money than they spend. Watch that bottom line!
Financial Management, Assets, Revenue, Expense, Financial Statements
Auditors often use a line titled “Accounts Payable and Accrued Liabilities.” The first element is probably familiar: accounts payable are amounts owed to suppliers. Accrued liabilities are also a form of payable, but where you have no invoice, and there is some element of estimation. For example, your auditor’s fee has to be accrued before they have completed the audit assignment, and before they send you their bill.
Don’t pre-sign cheques. Although the convenience is tempting, this is an “end run” around the authorization process. Signing officers’ responsibility is to review and approve transactions.
If you sell merchandise, keep a separate float for making change – don’t use your petty cash box for this purpose. Confusion is often created when the same “pot” of money is used for both spending and receiving money.
After the penny disappears from our Canadian coinage, non-cash transactions will continue to be calculated to cents. If you’re writing a cheque or paying online, do not round to the nearest nickel: continue to pay the exact amount.
Hard expense items are those where management has limited discretion or flexibility, or a strong commitment. See our Glossary for more definitions.
An office petty cash fund is a useful tool for covering small expenses. Limit access to the responsible staff member(s), and reconcile the fund regularly to catch errors.
Financial health check-up: consider related revenues and expenses. For instance, how do your fundraising costs relate to revenues? How about marketing expenses to box office revenues or program costs to fees for service? There is no one right proportion — but within your organization you need to consider appropriate financial benchmarks
Financial health check-up: most suppliers expect their bills to be paid within 30 days. A healthy organization will have enough cash and receivables (i.e. money to be collected within 30 days) to cover obligations and ongoing needs. On your balance sheet, compare accounts payable to cash and accounts receivable.
This can be a perplexing question when you’re relying on the services of bookkeepers and accountants, but you don’t entirely understand what they do.
Here are a few ideas that may help:
Revenue and expense allocations are pretty much up to you, the manager. Do you want a single expense account for Salaries? That’s entirely correct. Would you prefer to have a separate expense account for each salaried position? That’s also correct. Do you want one account for Office Overhead? Not a problem. Would you prefer to have a series of accounts to distinguish amongst various supplies, phone, insurance, etc.? Also entirely acceptable.
Management (perhaps with input as appropriate from your Treasurer, Board, accountant, bookkeeper, staff) needs to decide what level of detail works best for your organization’s situation. Once you’ve established a set of revenue and expense accounts, it’s important to confirm on a regular basis that transactions are being allocated to the right place. Many accounting software packages provide detailed reports that allow you quite easily to scan the contents of these accounts for misplaced items.
Your cash resources – contained in your bank and investment accounts – are the lifeblood of your organization. It’s important to know how much money is readily available to your day to day operations. See our FAQ on how to tell for sure what’s in the bank.
Knowing who owes you money, how much, and since when, is very important. Most accounting software will produce a “customer aging” report that contains this information. (See the glossary for a definition.)
In the same way, you need to be able to review your list of payables, itemizing the suppliers to whom you owe money, how much and since when. On most software, a “vendor aging” report provides this detail.
Beyond that, if your bookkeeper is on their game, they will be able to provide an explanation of the contents of each account, and to pull out documentation from the files that substantiates the amounts. If your organization is audited, your chartered accountant will also be able to provide these explanations, as at your fiscal year-end. If these folks can’t provide a satisfying explanation, you need to challenge them! They should be able to help you understand your accounts, and justify that each balance is properly stated.