Accounting-Tips-for-NonprofitsAccounting is a necessity to ensure your organization is financially sound. Without a proper accounting setup, your organization could find itself in financial trouble, and unable to support your mission.

It’s important that your accounting department stay organized in order to maintain efficiency. To help ensure you stay on track of your funds and grants, we’ve put together a few accounting tips.

Top Accounting Tips for Nonprofit Organizations

Follow GAAP – GAAP, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, are the standard guidelines for financial accounting, which include conventions and rules that accountants should follow when recording and summarizing financial statements. There are a few nonprofit differences however when it comes to: accounting for contributions, capitalizing and depreciating assets, use of cash- and modified cash accounting, and functional expense classification.

Use a Nonprofit-Specific Accounting SoftwareNonprofit accounting software is a critical component to your organizations efficiency and productivity. The software will allow you to track donations and grants, create reports, and more.

Schedule Accounting Reminders Weekly, Monthly and Quarterly – While your accounting software will help you stay organized, you should also plan to manually review certain aspects of your accounting weekly, monthly and quarterly. This will ensure that things are staying on track, and that your reports will be accurate when it’s time to present to your donors and/or Board of Directors.

Prepare for Audits – Nonprofit organizations are still privy to audits, despite their different accounting procedures. In addition to using your accounting software to prepare, you should also keep financial statements on hand and follow industry accounting standards.

Improve Your Accounting with Accounting Software

Capital Business Solutions provides accounting software to nonprofit organizations, including Abila MIP and SerraFund for NetSuite. We also provide consulting and training for a variety of Blackbaud software solutions, including Raiser’s Edge, Education Edge and Financial Edge. To learn more about accounting software and/or our consulting services, please call 877-889-0629, email bschilling@capitalbusiness.net or fill out our online contact form.