The hardest part of year-end contractor reporting often is not preparing the forms. It is discovering in January that the information needed to prepare them was never collected or was recorded inconsistently throughout the year. A consultant may have been paid through several accounts. A vendor’s legal name may not match the name in the […]

Year-end accounting problems rarely begin at year-end. More often, they are unresolved items that have been sitting quietly in the books for weeks or months and become urgent only when December adds holidays, fundraising activity, payroll deadlines, board reporting, audit preparation, and tax work. An unexplained balance, an old receivable, missing documentation, an unreconciled account, […]

A donor gives $25,000 specifically for a youth education program. The fundraising team records the donor’s instructions correctly, sends the acknowledgment, and moves on to the next gift. A month later, leadership reviews the financial statements and sees the $25,000 included with funds available for general operations. The donation made it into the accounting system. […]

GivingTuesday can generate a surge of donations in a very short period. For leadership, the important question is not only how much was raised, but whether finance and fundraising can explain the same result with confidence. That becomes difficult when development is reporting campaign totals while finance is looking at deposits, fees, restrictions, and accounting […]

A nonprofit can finish the year with a balanced budget, or even a healthy surplus, and still experience significant cash pressure somewhere along the way. The reason is that an annual budget and a cash forecast answer different questions. A budget shows how much revenue and expense the organization expects over the course of the […]