Nonprofit Accounting: A Guide to Basics and Best Practices

A vendor or service provider may lend time or resources, helping your nonprofit as an act of charity. This would be an in-kind donation, viewed differently than a cash donation by the IRS. This is another example of an activity that should be differentiated and properly tracked. Everyone involved with your nonprofit, from your customers to your employees and your board, wants to see you pursue large-scale opportunities that support the organization’s mission.

Learning how to do nonprofit accounting and understanding which statements a nonprofit needs to prepare is crucial for anyone who wants to run a successful nonprofit. Some donors choose to judge nonprofits based solely on their overhead expenses. However, this narrative is changing in the sector as more people become aware that overhead is a necessary expense for growth. Encourage your donors to https://www.bookstime.com/articles/what-is-a-classified-balance-sheet judge your organization based on your impact in the community rather than how much you spend on fundraising and administrative expenses. In this document, you’ll record your nonprofit’s revenue and expenses from the year, to demonstrate how finances have been utilized. Essentially, the Form 990 is the IRS’s method of evaluation to make sure your nonprofit is financially honest and legitimate.

QuickBooks Enterprise Nonprofit

With FastFund Fundraising, you can create detailed donor profiles, track cash, pledges, and in-kind gifts, and create customized donor receipts. When bundled with FastFund Accounting, FastFund Fundraising is available for as little as $20 per month, or $42 per month as a standalone product. Financial Edge also integrates with Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge, the gold-standard program for donor management and fundraising, so you can make sure your organization’s efforts are cohesive. ACCOUNTS through Software4Nonprofits is a program offered by Cooperstock Software, a small company based in Canada. The company was founded by the treasurer of a religious finance committee because he had difficulties finding software that met his needs.

Your nonprofit’s statement of activities goes by many names such as your income statement, budget report, profit/loss, income/expense, and others. No matter what your nonprofit calls this statement, it’s used for the same purpose. You always have access to your financial records and can switch to a nonprofit accounting software only subscription at any point with a 30-day notice if you decide to manage the books yourself. We will reconcile your bank accounts to prepare your balance sheet, income statement and other financial reports upon request, as well as advise you on how to read your reports.

How To Do Bookkeeping for Nonprofits

When you choose Supporting Strategies for this work, you gain a partner that is aware of the latest changes involving revenue recognition, presentation of financial data, and more. When your organization implements effective bookkeeping for nonprofits, you’ll be able to better predict your operating and fundraising expenses for a more accurate budget in the future. Therefore, be sure your bookkeeping for nonprofits software allows you to store past budgets with planned and real expenditures for future reference. Its ease of use makes it perfect for organizations that want to jump right in and spend little time on training. Once you’ve established a bank account and chosen accounting software, align them for reconciliation purposes. If you have not chosen accounting software, need help comparing accounting software features, or think you need to brush-up or train members of the team, a good bookkeeper can take care of that for you.

Internal controls not only limit cases of fraud, but often aid in catching errors. Even if your nonprofit consists of only two employees, there should still be a “checks and balances” system in place. No matter how big or small nonprofits are, internal controls are essential for effective nonprofit accounting. Your nonprofit budget is the planning document used to predict expenses and allocate resources for your organization. It details both the costs that your organization will incur as well as the revenue you expect to receive over a set period of time, usually a year.

Nonprofit Bookkeeping Starts With Your Bank Accounts

For-profit companies use balance sheets to show the assets of their organization that can then be distributed to stockholders as retained earnings. However, nonprofits don’t have stockholders, so they have no need for a balance sheet. While you’ll have one annual budget that you rely on for your organization’s overarching activities, you’ll also likely have other budgets throughout the year as well.

Not only that, but different departments within nonprofits tend to bookkeep differently. For instance, your development department uses the cash-basis accounting while finance departments tend to use accrual. Absolutely, we can have regular meetings so you can advise on the reporting you need and you can access your bookkeeping online at any time to pull reports and review the books. Aplos will set up your accounting to achieve the financial reports you need. If they must, because your organization is small, set up a process where the bank statements are reviewed monthly by the Treasurer or another board member.