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Accounting Software

Tame the Paper Tiger: How to Get Accounting Files Under Control

By | Accounting, Accounting Software, Nonprofit | No Comments
person using ERP accounting software on both a mobile phone and laptop, Accounting Files

How dependent is your office on physical paper? Do you have file cabinets crammed into every hallway and corner, or have you tamed the paper tiger and transformed your office into a streamlined and efficient digitally based accounting office?

The pandemic forced many organizations to consider going paperless as more employees had to work from home. However, not everyone continued the transition to paperless. Many organizations continue using basic software such as spreadsheets to manage their accounting. They print invoices and bills, file bank statements and credit card statements, and keep customer files in file cabinets.

This isn’t necessarily bad, but it is inefficient. Today’s digital transformation affects nonprofits just as it does for profits, offering time-saving software and technology to better manage accounting, finance, and overall paperwork. Let’s get your paperwork under control and talk about some of the new and better ways to manage these tasks.

Nonprofit Accounting Software

Specialized nonprofit accounting software can help you move from an inefficient paper-based or spreadsheet-based accounting to a nearly paperless office.

Nonprofit accounting software was built specifically for nonprofit organizations. It includes basics such as a general ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable, and organizes the information logically for nonprofits. Additional nonprofit accounting software offers grant management functions, tracking expenses and revenues by program area, and more. Donor management software can be used alongside nonprofit accounting software to manage outreach campaigns and provide a coordinated central repository for all information.

Using nonprofit accounting software instead of spreadsheets helps control excess paper in your office in several ways. Nearly all the basic accounting functions you need to track, from invoices to credit card and banking information, are all tracked electronically, eliminating the need to print and store everything. Additionally, you can run reports more easily from a dedicated nonprofit accounting program than from spreadsheets. You can create and share PDFs of your balance statement, income statement, cash flow, and more.

During audits, if you currently need the auditors onsite or must print reams of paper and carry it to their office, you’ll find it much easier with accounting software. With nonprofit accounting software, you can provide auditors with usernames and passwords, allowing the auditors to select and review any information electronically. And, if you’ve chosen to use a cloud-based accounting platform, the auditors can access the system remotely. They may not have to spend several days onsite if they can review information electronically.

By moving your accounting to a completely digital system, you’ll save paper (and trees!). You’ll also reduce the number of mistakes in your accounting. Unlike a spreadsheet, which may require you to type information into multiple worksheets, with an accounting program, you just enter it once into the system. Accounting software offers many timesaving features and improves efficiency in any organization.

Differences Between Nonprofit Accounting Software and Small Business Software

Many nonprofits consider specialized accounting software but opt instead for off the shelf small business software. Such software may be appealing. It may have a lower price tag and easier onboarding than a robust nonprofit accounting platform.

However, small business software is not designed for the specific needs of a nonprofit. It does not track revenues and expenses by program. It cannot manage grants easily. And it does not integrate with donation software. What you save in upfront and other licensing costs, you may end up spending on custom programing to get small business software to produce the right reports or track line items correctly to the general ledger.

Speak with Nonprofit Accounting Software Experts

If it’s time to make the switch and tame the paper tiger, speak with the nonprofit accounting and software consultants at Welter Consulting today. We’re experienced at working in the nonprofit world and understand the challenges you face managing your accounting. We can suggest the right accounting platform and other software to streamline your office and tame that paper tiger.

Welter Consulting

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. Please contact us for more information.

The Art of Accounting Storytelling: Use Storytelling Techniques for Effective Presentations

By | Accounting, Accounting Software, Nonprofit, Uncategorized | No Comments
Person giving accounting presentation via a large computer monitor, Accounting Storytelling

Once upon a time …

Your mind probably raced back to childhood at that phrase, to many pleasant memories of adults reading stories to you. The human mind is hardwired to listen to stories, and our brains naturally gravitate toward the time-tested framework of a story: a beginning, middle, and end; a hero on a quest; a villain who tried to stop the hero; and the wise guide who helps the hero overcome the challenges.

Financial professionals may think that storytelling techniques are for sales, marketing, and donor relations, but they also offer a rich framework with which to share information so that it is understood and remembered. Let’s examine the art of storytelling and how accountants can leverage this method for better communications.

Why Use a Story Framework for Financial Presentations?

Every accountant or financial professional must present numbers. Whether it’s presentation budgets to stakeholders or reviewing the annual report with the board, at some point this year you will be asked to present to a group.

Part of the art of presenting wisely is engaging the audience’s attention. Accountants may face a significant challenge when presenting numbers because not everyone in the group understands basic accounting concepts. To have your point understood and remembered, you may need to use creative methods to share information. This is where storytelling techniques come into play.

Everyone has heard stories. We watch movies and television shows, we read books and see plays. We know the framework of a good story. It is burned into our subconscious mind through thousands of repetitions over the course of a lifetime. Tapping into this framework to share financial information helps engage your audience and share information in ways they can easily grasp.

Accounting Storytelling Framework

So just how can you use a storytelling framework for your numbers-based presentation? Think of the hero’s journey. Every hero starts off on a quest. Luke Skywalker set out to return R2D2 and the Death Star plans to the Rebels to thwart Darth Vader and the evil empire. That was his quest and the hero’s journey unfolded in two hours of adventure that has kept audience spellbound for decades.

Now you may not be a Jedi knight, but you are the ninja of accounting, so let’s apply this framework to a common scenario: presenting budgets to stakeholders. In your accounting story, you must first explain the challenges from the audience’s perspective. You must see the information through their eyes and focus on what is important and memorable to them.

What information are you sharing with them? What is the story behind the numbers? Focus on the narrative flow around the data. What is the high-level takeaway, and what is the story inherent in the information?

Good stories paint visual pictures in the mind of the audience. You can do this with your data by using data visualizations such as graphs and charts. The old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words is true when it comes to presenting accounting or financial data.

Using Your Accounting Software to Craft a Compelling Story

The right accounting software plays an important role transforming basic data into stories through data visualizations. Does your software help you create various charts, graphs, and other visualizations for compelling presentations, or do you spend hours exporting data into spreadsheets and crafting visuals from imported data?

If the latter describes a typical scenario, it’s time to consider updating your software. Newer government accounting software and nonprofit accounting software provides robust data visualizations. It can really make a significant difference not only in how you present but in the impact your presentation has on the audience.

Using storytelling techniques to share financial information may seem far-fetched, but it’s a time-tested method for helping audiences engage and connect with information. Try it and become the hero of your finance team

Welter Consulting

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. Please contact us for more information.

Planning for the Successful Transition to New Accounting Software

By | Accounting, Accounting Software, Nonprofit | No Comments
person using accounting software on laptop and mobile phone

Perhaps your organization has outgrown spreadsheets or off-the-shelf small business accounting software. Now, it’s time to find government fund accounting or nonprofit fund accounting software. The platform of your dreams has all the bells and whistles you’ve hoped for: great budgeting features, invoicing and automation, and super reports.

As you prepare for the implementation of your new accounting solution, there are several steps you can take to prepare your data and your team for the transition to the new platform. With these steps, you’re more likely to have a successful transition to your brand-new accounting software.

Clean Your Data

The data that’s currently in your system, whether you’re using spreadsheets or a small business accounting program, will move into the new system to get it started. If there are mistakes or errors in your current system, now is the time to correct them.

Cleaning data refers to the process of identifying and correcting errors, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies in a dataset to ensure its accuracy, completeness, and reliability for analysis or other purposes. This process involves several steps, including identifying errors, handling missing data, removing duplicates, and standardizing data. Additional steps may be resolving inconsistencies and developing what is called a “data dictionary” or a standard guide to data inputs.

Consider your donations for the past year, for example. Perhaps you input donor names and addresses into a database, spreadsheet, or your old business accounting program, and now you want to move it into your new accounting database. Checking to make sure there are no duplicates is a smart idea. Duplicates may not be exact matches, so you may need to work with your team to generate lists and manually check them. (For very large data files, there are companies that specialize in data cleanup.) Common places where duplicates creep into files include:

  • Addresses where road, street, or avenue are spelled out—and a second address where it is abbreviated. You’ll need to decide what the standard for your organization will be—the postal abbreviation or spelling out the full word.
  • Names where a first initial is used (J. Smith), fully spelled out (John Smith), or includes a middle initial (John A. Smith). You’ll have to decide which John Smith version to keep.

These are just two examples of some very common areas where duplicate records can occur. Other places to clean up before exporting your data to move it into the new system include reconciling bank accounts and credit cards, updating A/P and A/R, and ensuring other financial information is updated and accurate.

Document Procedures and Workflows

The accounting and finance team should document common processes, procedures, and workflows. This is important because your new accounting platform may include ways to automate steps in the workflow. It is also a good time to dust off any procedures you have already written out and update them if necessary.

Some examples include:

Donation Processing Workflow

  • Receiving donations via various channels (online, mail, in-person).
  • Recording donor information and donation details.
  • Issuing donation receipts or acknowledgments.
  • Allocating donations to specific programs or funds (if applicable).
  • Reconciling donation records with bank deposits.

Program Expense Allocation Workflow

  • Allocating expenses to specific programs or projects.
  • Tracking program-related expenses separately from administrative and fundraising expenses.
  • Ensuring expenses are allocated in accordance with donor restrictions (if any).
  • Reporting on program expenses to stakeholders, including donors and grantors.

Other common nonprofit workflows include grant fund management, compliance reports, and general financial reporting.

By documenting frequently used workflows on paper, you’ll be in a much better position to understand how the same process works in your new accounting platform. Working with your software vendor or consultant, you can set up the workflows, ensure the reports you need are ready, and be better prepared for the new software.

Work with a Skilled Nonprofit Accounting Consultant When Installing New Accounting Software

It’s vital to get your new accounting software set up, and the data moved into it correctly. This is an area where having a skilled and experienced nonprofit accounting software consultant is vital. With the right consultant by your side, the transition to your new platform will be smoother and easier. You’ll be up and running in no time, with the right automations in place for maximum efficiency so you can better manage margin to support your mission.

Welter Consulting

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. Please contact us for more information.

A Guide to Nonprofit Budgeting: Navigating the Essentials

By | Accounting, Accounting Software, Budget, Nonprofit | No Comments
A Guide to Nonprofit Budgeting, people at desk or table with tablet, spreadsheets, and ledger

Budgets provide the financial foundation upon which an organization must run all its activities. Without a budget, it is almost impossible to manage cash flow. Budgets provide structure, organization, and financial stability that helps you with strategic planning.

Although it’s possible to run a company or a nonprofit solely off cash flow without budgeting for specific activities, it makes planning for steady growth and new activities very difficult. Budgets serve as both guidelines and tools, helping organizations plan for activities, manage cash flow, and view expenses. Here, we’ll share with you the main types of budgets used by nonprofits, as well as discuss each section of the budget in greater detail. Lastly, we’ll talk about ways to manage nonprofit budgeting to make the process go smoothly.

Key Components of Nonprofit Budgets: Income (Revenue) and Expenses

We can break nonprofit budgets into two simple categories: income and expenses. Income refers to money coming into the organization, and expenses refers to the money the organization spends. All financial activities can be grouped under each category. The difference between income and expenses results in a surplus when the difference is positive (more income than expenses) or a loss or deficit (when expenses exceed income).

Source of Income

Your organization probably has several sources of income. Some of these income sources are unique to the nonprofit world. Typical sources of income include donations, program fees, membership fees, sales of products or services, grants, and special events.

Because nonprofits invest their income into their programs and services to fulfill their mission, they must track carefully where revenues come from and how they are spent. Sometimes, nonprofit income is tied to specific programs or activities. For example, donors may indicate they wish their donation to be used only for a specific program or added to the general operating fund. If the donation is intended for a specific program, the organization must ensure that they budget the funds or add them to the fund for that specific activity.

A good example is a nonprofit animal shelter. Many have “spay and neuter funds,” which are set up to pay for low-cost or free spay/neuter programs to address the surplus of homeless animals in the local community. If donors give to that program, the shelter must honor the donor’s wishes and ensure that the money is spent on that program. They cannot reapportion the funds for the general budget to pay for advertising, for example, or for salaries and wages; funds raised for a specific purpose must go to fulfill that purpose.

Another example of how nonprofit revenues must be tracked differently from for-profit income streams is grants. Grants are often given for highly specific purposes or to fund specific programs. Granting organizations often require careful accounting of how the funds are spent.

Importance of Diversifying Income

Although we spoke at length about two sources of income—donations and grants—nonprofits receive income from many places. They may sell products or charge a fee for services. They may receive donations of goods. Each of these income categories requires careful tracking and recording of the income received.

As in the for-profit world, smart nonprofits diversify their income as much as possible. It’s never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket or rely solely on one channel for income. A nonprofit that relies on a single large grant to fund multiple program activities may be in deep trouble if the grant doesn’t continue, for example. A diverse income stream of donations, fees for services or goods, grants, and other sources of income ensures that even if trouble hits one category, it won’t jeopardize the entire budget.

Expenses

Expenses refers to everything your organization must spend money on to keep running: operational costs (overhead, utilities, telephone and internet expenses, professional fees, insurance), rents or licenses, fixed assets such as furniture and computers, marketing and sales, salary, and benefits. You must track all your expenses to ensure that you have a clear and detailed view of how your organization spends its money.

Once you track expenses, it becomes clear which categories are consuming the largest share of the budget. You can then take steps to either minimize this spend or manage it prudently. There are many areas where expenses can be cut without compromising the quality of the services you deliver. For example, you may be able to cut back on insurance expenses by shopping for and comparing different policies and coverages. Or you may find that hiring remote employees helps you keep rent costs low because you don’t need as large an office building. These are just examples of how expenses can be managed to keep them low.

The Most Common Types of Budgets Used by Nonprofits

There are many ways in which you can create a budget. If your organization has a budget in place, you may use that as a starting point each year and adjust income and expenses based on projections. You may also find that a new approach to budgeting is helpful.

The three most common types of budgets used by nonprofits include:

  1. Program-Based Budgeting: This approach is widely used by nonprofits as it aligns budget allocations directly with the organization’s programs and initiatives. It allows for clear tracking of resources allocated to each program, making it easier to assess the effectiveness and impact of those programs.
  2. Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB): While not as prevalent as program-based budgeting, ZBB is still commonly used by nonprofits, especially those seeking to ensure maximum efficiency and accountability in resource allocation. ZBB encourages a thorough review of all expenses, promoting cost-conscious decision-making throughout the organization. Zero-based budgets start at zero each year, with budgets built from scratch. Each expense and income must be estimated from scratch based on current conditions.
  3. Outcomes-Based Budgeting: Nonprofits are increasingly adopting outcome-based budgeting to demonstrate the impact of their activities and investments. By linking budget allocations to desired outcomes or impacts, organizations can better prioritize resources and measure their effectiveness in achieving their mission.

Ready, Set, Budget! The Budgeting Process

Creating a good budget takes time. Leave at least several weeks to build your budget and, if you need to gain approval from your board or managers, time for review, feedback, revision, and final approval.

Depending on the type of budget you are building, there are several ways to begin the process. You’ll need to understand all the categories you have to account for in the income and expense areas. Gather the necessary information: previous years’ income statements and cash flows, sources of revenues, and the like, as well as expenses.

Determine a reasonable percent by which you think you can increase both income and expenses. It’s natural to hope for the best, but it’s better to conservatively estimate increased income. If you plan to increase income, will you need to spend more on specific activities, such as marketing and donor relationships, to achieve your goals? All of these must be considered as part of your strategic plan as well as the budgeting process.

Your organization’s accountant or bookkeeper is instrumental in the budgeting process. Schedule time to review income and expenses together. Then, connect with staff as needed to gather additional input.

A budget is a living document. Like a good strategic plan or marketing plan, adjustments should be made to it as the year progresses (it’s not a once-and-done activity). Schedule periodic budget reviews and make necessary adjustments to income projections or expenses as you need to ensure an end-of-year surplus that can be invested back into the organization’s mission. A quarterly review may be sufficient. Some organizations conduct budget reviews monthly, others quarterly or twice a year. At a minimum, an annual budget review and budgeting cycle are necessary for a healthy financial picture.

Tools to Make Budgeting Easier

There are several types of accounting software that can make nonprofit budgeting easier. Spreadsheets are frequently used but have several drawbacks. They must be manually updated and can grow to be quite complex depending on the number of programs you’re managing. They also lack good reporting functions.

Many small business software packages seem like they would be a good step up, but these also have several drawbacks. While they can automate many tasks and produce good reports like balance statements, cash flows, and similar reports, they may require extensive customization to track income and expenses by program, or track donation information. They are not built for the unique requirements of nonprofit accounting.

Nonprofit accounting software is built specifically for nonprofit budgeting. There are packages for nonprofits and government accounting, so you start with a system designed with your specific income and expense needs in mind. Some offer cloud or browser-based versions, which make it easy for remote employees and auditors to log into the system to perform the work.

Welter Consulting

Whether you are new to nonprofit budgeting or highly experienced at it, if you need assistance choosing your budgeting method, selecting nonprofit accounting software, or moving from spreadsheets or another software to a new nonprofit-specific accounting platform, contact Welter Consulting. We are happy to help.

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. Please contact us for more information.