Monthly Archives

May 2017

Is your Organization at Risk for a Data Breach?

By | Data, Nonprofit | No Comments

How often do you read about a data breach, identity theft or other types of computer hacks where personal information has been compromised? What would happen if your nonprofit data was breached and what information would be potentially stolen? As a nonprofit organization, you collect a lot of data on donors, clients, staff and other supporters and having all that data places a lot of responsibility on the organization to secure and manage it well. Having nonprofit accounting policies in place is a necessity to safeguard everyone’s interests.

How Much Data Do You Collect?

At first glance, you may think you don’t collect all that much data. Sure, you’ve got a mailing list on file of people interested in your nonprofit’s work, and email addresses for that monthly newsletter to send out, but doesn’t everyone?

Consider how people donate to your nonprofit. If you accept credit card donations over the internet, website security becomes critical to prevent criminals from stealing data from your donors. Passwords may also be important if you have a members-only area on your site where you host forums. When you really sit down to analyze your organization’s data collection methods, you’ll quickly realize that you’ve got more data than you initially thought.

Keeping Data Safe: Creating a Data Ethics Policy

Many organizations are creating nonprofit accounting policies for data security and ethics to help safeguard customer privacy and maintain the high level of trust they’ve worked so hard to build with their constituents.

To create your own organizational data ethics policy, follow these five tips:

1. Establish data-use goals: Knowing exactly why your organization collects data, and the use to which you will put it in the future, is the starting point for a data ethics policy. You have to know the reason why you’re collecting the data in the first place to establish guidelines about its use. Some common reasons for collecting customer data include future marketing, such as requesting that interested people sign up for your email list so that you can send them donation solicitations later.

2. Create a privacy policy: Privacy policies exist everywhere on websites but an important part of your data security and ethics work. You can create a privacy policy in several ways. There are privacy policy generators online that help you build a simple boilerplate privacy policy for your website. You can also ask your legal counsel for a recommendation. Once you create your privacy policy, post it online.

3. Assess the risks: Take a data inventory to understand exactly what data you have stored and what the risks are of maintaining it. Know what you have to work with, how and where it is stored, and who has access to it. Lastly, determine who controls access to the data and the steps your organization has taken to safeguard it.

4. Add safeguards: Every day it seems that hackers have found new ways to break into websites and steal personal information from customers. It may be worthwhile to consult with an internet security expert to make sure that your website and network have the latest security safeguards in place. Updating software and plugins for websites, adding a virus protector to WordPress-based sites to screen for virus-filled spam, and using other simple measures may go a long way in preventing theft and security breaches.

5. Conduct due diligence: If third parties have access to your data, such as mailing house or email service providers, do you conduct due diligence to ensure that their safety procedures match or exceed your own? Few organizations give much thought to who in other companies may use or

access their data. Make sure that you have steps in place to screen companies and understand their data security policies. Common third-party vendors who may access your data include marketing agencies, mailing list companies, list brokers, email service providers, and fundraising organizations.

Nonprofit Accounting Policies for Data Security

Once you have the basic information about your current data collection and use, formulate a general ethics policy and procedure document that can be shared throughout your organization. A little work now will come in handy later if the unthinkable happens and you have a data breach on your hands. Your constituents will thank you for taking extra steps to safeguard your data.

At Welter Consulting we are committed to keeping your information secure and finding you the most affordable technology, the most powerful solution, and providing expert support. We are dedicated to assist you in achieving your mission by leveraging technology and superior reporting. We are passionate professionals who choose to work in the nonprofit sector for the same reason you do – helping others. Click here to see a complete listing of upcoming training and webinars, including the Free NonProfit

Tips and Tricks: Finding and Using Advanced Smartphone Calculator Apps

By | Accounting, Audit, Budget, CPA, Nonprofit | No Comments

How did any of us manage our businesses without smartphones? Today’s smartphones act like portable computers with more computing power in these tiny handheld gadgets then people a decade or two ago could imagine. For the busy CPA on the go, a smartphone offers a great portable computer that can

perform many tasks while you’re traveling, working from a client’s office, or trying to sneak in a bit of work between innings at your child’s Little League game.

One important app that no CPA’s smartphone should be without is a calculator app. We’re not talking about the simple apps that come with your smartphone, great though they may be. We’re talking about apps that pack the power punch a CPA needs for advanced number crunching.

Let’s take a look at some tips and tricks for finding and using advanced smartphone calculator apps. Before downloading any app, check to make sure it is compatible with your particular make and model of phone.

Android Compatible Calculator Apps

* One++ offers 245 calculating options that cover more than the basic needs of the average CPA. Unit conversations, basic and advanced math, capitalization ratios, depreciation, and much more are all available. Best of all, it can be voice activated, so it can find formula prompts for you with verbal commands. It can recognize 12 languages, so if you’re traveling and need to share it with another CPA, you’re covered too. It’s a great tool available from many of the Android Shops online, and it’s FREE.

* Mobi: Mobi offers two choices of calculators, a free version, and a very minimally priced paid version. The free version is just a step up from basic, but Mobi Calculator Pro, the paid version, offers great features for a CPA. The paid version features include expressions, formulas and highly advanced calculators. The app includes a memory function that enables you to recall the past 50 calculations, so if you make a mistake you can backtrack and find it. It also allows you to save your work.

* Wolfram Alpha: For less than what a latte costs, Wolfram Alpha offers a wealth of tools for financial advisors, CPAs, and others involved in the world of accounting, investments, and financial management. Data and research on stocks, indexes, mortgage value, present value, depreciation and other issues are included, and the tool can also perform advanced research for many financial queries. Wolfram Alpha also has an iOS version compatible with iPhones.

iOS Apps

* Soulver: For a small cost, you’ve got an amazing smartphone app for your iOS compatible products. Soulver includes columnar formatted calculations that are editable. You can also create currency conversions and perform unit conversions.

* Tydlig: Talk about a spreadsheet on the go – or on your phone, that is Tydlig. It combines a calculator with spreadsheet-style functions to build your own accounting canvas. Add labels to graphs and charts, calculate formulas, and export your work to a PDF to print back at the office. It’s a great portable accounting app if you travel a lot and need to conduct some work on the fly. For the amount of a candy bar, it may be a great investment for your productivity.

To find a great calculator app for your needs, review these and other compatible apps using any free trials offered. At these prices, however, you don’t need to pinch pennies. You can try one or several for a while and see which one feels right for your business needs.

With so many CPAs traveling for business, working remotely, or working during their mass transit commutes, calculator apps such as these offer great productivity tools.

Welter Consulting bridges people and technology together for effective solutions for nonprofit organizations. We offer software and services that can help you with your accounting needs. We offer hands-on training as well as webinars to take you to the next level with your fund accounting system. Check out the full schedule of our training events here.

Accounting for Interdepartmental Sales: It’s More Important than You Think

By | Accounting, Nonprofit | No Comments

Although the term interdepartmental sales may be reminiscent of the for-profit world, nonprofit organizations must be careful to account for transactions among departments or entities within their organization and account for them properly. When the output of one division in your organization becomes the input of another, you have an interdepartmental transfer on your hands – and a transaction that must be recorded in the accounts.

For a nonprofit organization, interdepartmental sales may be less common than in the for-profit world, but it still occurs. Let’s say that your nonprofit has a publishing division that publishes guidebooks for the industry that you serve. These books cost $20 each, wholesale price, and earn a substantial amount of margin for your nonprofit when sold through bookstores, online outlets, and at membership events. If a department orders 20 books, these books must be taken out of inventory and charged back to the department. Failing to charge back to the department ordering the books means a loss in the publishing division without accounting for the transfer. Interdepartmental transfers account for the movement of goods from one group’s budget to another in the organization.

Nonprofits that offer consulting services to members may also find that they need to account for interdepartmental transfers. If similar services offered internally generate revenue when offered externally, they should be priced and charged as interdepartmental transfers.

Conflicting Goals

There are certain problems inherent in any interdepartmental transfer. Interdepartmental transfers may be charged at a lower rate than selling the same goods or services to an entity outside of the organization. Too many interdepartmental transfers can keep a department from achieving financial goals. The department has more incentive to sell to outside entities than internal ones if they can make a higher margin on the same item sold elsewhere.

It can also be tricky to account for every service or item moving between departments. Should the creative services department charge for their graphic designer’s time when they also provide services to members?

Developing a rubric for interdepartmental transfers can pre-empty these and other questions that arise as you consider accounting for interdepartmental transfers. Not every situation is black and white, and a balance must be struck between common sense and good accounting practices. Each nonprofit will handle the situation differently depending on how they work with external and internal groups.

Get Feedback

Lastly, it is important to involve your organization’s managers in decisions regarding interdepartmental transfer pricing. Establishing pricing policies impacts their budgets. If their performance reviews are based on how well they achieve their goals, including managing budgets, then ensuring that this information is calculated fairly and with input is important.

Another method to assess interdepartmental transfer pricing is to review the going rate for similar goods and services. If a published average is available for your industry, item, or service, then using a published, commonly accepted rate may be a good way to begin. With input and review, this information may be enough to provide a fair range of interdepartmental pricing.

Although uncommon in the nonprofit world, transfer pricing or interdepartmental pricing is an important part of accounting for nonprofits. Having an established policy that can guide managers and staff is a great step forward.

Did you know that Welter Consulting offers the Nonprofit Enrichment Series, a free learning resource for nonprofit organizations? Check out our next free webinar.

No Margin, No Mission: Building a Surplus to Serve More Constituents

By | Accounting, Budget, CPA, Grant Management, Nonprofit | No Comments

An administrative assistant for the finance director at a nonprofit organization had a sign hanging over his desk: “No margin, no mission.”

For nonprofit organizations, having a surplus or margin is an important part of budgeting. Without budgeting for a surplus, you’ll end up scrambling to cover the inevitable times when donations do not meet goals or the roof starts leaking, necessitating an emergency repair.

Budgeting for a surplus builds up that cushion against a rainy day so that you can continue with your activities undaunted by unexpected expenses.

Budgeting for Surplus

Many nonprofits respond to shortfalls by cutting spending. There’s nothing wrong with such an approach and it can be a healthy way to keep expenses from going up. However, you can’t always cut expenses. There comes a time when expenses are cut to the quick and there’s nothing else to cut.

That’s when budgeting for a surplus comes in handy.

Budgeting for a surplus means establishing an annual surplus goal and setting aside an amount to put into the surplus fund just as you would set aside money for your operating budget, marketing budget, salaries and wages and so forth.

Mandating a surplus is the first step towards achieving a comfortable reserve. Nonprofits mandating towards surplus typically begin during the budgeting cycle by starting a budget from scratch, keeping a set figure in the baseline budget for a surplus amount. By counting the surplus from the start as a line item on the budget, it’s already built into the budget and part of the goals to achieve. It becomes an integral part of the budget rather than an item to add later.

Exceeding Goals

A happy circumstance for any nonprofit is exceeding its financial goals for the year. If your organization finds itself ahead financially, the Finance Committee can negotiate with the managers to lower the surplus over a period of one to several years. This spreads the benefit of a boom year across multiple years and maintains a surplus without keeping too much in reserve.

Potential Obstacles

To budget for a surplus, you must marry a reasonable approach to budgeting with an encouraging nod towards cutting expenses. You can’t control income, only influence it through activities. Expenses, however, can, for the most part, be controlled. Yet there are some fixed expenses that must be maintained for the good of the organization, such as rent, health insurance, and so on.

Balancing the need to cut expenses with the need for a surplus can be challenging. Including representatives from all departments in the budgeting process helps accounting and finance see the big picture view and understand potential conflicts in the budgeting cycle.

Final Thoughts on Surplus Budgeting

Obtaining surplus margin ensures that your nonprofit organization can weather the storms of recession, unexpected expenses, or boom years when donations and other revenue sources flow into the organization.

Additional tips for surplus budget include:

* Analyze the organization’s current budget and balance sheet to understand all potential sources of revenues and expenses.

* Communicate and educate all departments on how to read the budgets and financial statements. Help team leaders understand how their contributions to each budget line impact the whole.

* Develop consensus on the surplus budget amount.

* Align organization-wide goals to achieving the surplus.

* Develop strategic plans, marketing, and operational plans that support goals.

With the right planning, you too can have enough margin to achieve your mission – and a surplus, too. Budgeting towards surplus is an achievable goal.

Welter Consulting bridges people and technology together for effective solutions for nonprofit organizations. We offer software and services that can help you with your budgeting processes along with many other accounting needs. We offer hands-on training as well as online webinars to take you to the next level with your fund accounting system. Check out the full schedule of our training events here.