Financial Management
Most non-profit and public agency leaders come up through the program side of the agency and know very little about fiscal management, including developing budgets, interpreting financial reports, and maintaining good internal controls. A non-profit agency is a business that doesn’t pay taxes. Its leaders need to understand something about running a business.
Too often in the news you hear about long term employees or board members embezzling funds from small non-profits, or agencies getting in financial difficulty because no one really knew how to track and analyze their fiscal situation. Many executive directors cannot adequately oversee the work of their fiscal department.
Without adequate training, leaders tend to delegate too much to the fiscal staff and volunteers who do the work. Or they get involved in the day to day minutia of fiscal management and can’t get their more important work done.
There is a healthy middle ground. By creating adequate, but simple, internal controls and learning to understand how the fiscal system operates, agency leaders and board members can promote quality record keeping and have a much better handle on their finances without investing excessive time in the process.
Bookkeeping when done well is a seamless, almost invisible part of agency operations. It manages the financial transactions and provides important data for forecasting future trends and needs. A well maintained set of books also makes for an easy and lower cost audit.
Krieger Solutions, LLC has developed a number of solutions to help you address these concerns:
- Individual coaching so leaders develop skills and strategies for improving their financial systems.
- Consulting with your bookkeeper and Treasurer to set up an efficient bookkeeping system that you can run yourself, or we can do the bookkeeping for you.
- Direct bookkeeping services to ensure accurate and adequate records are maintained.
Call us 518-895-2939 or email us if you’d like to explore how we can be of assistance.
In addition to coaching and consulting we also offer training programs for non-financial managers and board members on the basics of non-profit or municipal accounting with an emphasis on budgeting, reading reports and establishing good internal controls.
All programs are presented in plain English – no accounting background needed! They are designed for non-financial managers.
Training programs include:
Unraveling the Bookkeeping Mystery
This workshop will help you better:
- Identify what fiscal reports you need to see regularly to effectively manage your agency, including:
- Income Statement / Statement of Revenues and Expenses
- Year to date budget comparison
- Balance sheet
- Bank reconciliation
- Receivables and aged receivables
- Payables and aged payables
- Read and understand what to look for in fiscal reports, including your audit
- Understand cash vs. accrual accounting
- Understand capital expenditures and depreciation
- Clarify the role of the Executive Director, Program Director, Treasurer and Board in overseeing the agency’s finance system
- Understand the systems needed for effective fiscal management, including:
- monitoring the agency’s financial status and how the pieces fit together
- maintaining fiscal security through separation of duties for better control
- forecasting short term and long term financial needs, including budgets and cash flow
- communication between Director, staff and board regarding fiscal matters
- organizing your records to be better prepared for audits
How to Develop, Monitor and Manage Your Budget
This workshop will help you:
a) Understand the purposes of a budget
b) Learn how to create a budget that accurately reflects your operation, including:
- setting up a useful budget (chart of accounts)
- setting up a budget to reflect multiple funding years for grant revenues
- assigning income and expenses to different contracts/funding sources
- determining the true cost of a program and correctly allocating costs – overhead, personnel, shared costs
- accurately identifying administrative costs
- establishing accurate and useful monthly budget targets
- understanding the difference between cash and accrual accounting and how this affects budgets
- understanding capital expenditures and depreciation
c) Learn how to use a budget to improve agency management, including:
- producing and using meaningful financial statements
- tracking and forecasting cash flow to handle delays in grant start up
- ensuring that all budget lines are spent as planned or adjusting budget lines appropriately
- understanding staff and board member’s roles in fiscal management
- educating staff and board about the budget
- using the budget to assist with internal controls to ensure a well protected system and to fulfill obligations of due diligence.
Financial Governance
Board members and leaders of non-profit agencies are responsible for oversight and management of the agency’s financial management system. Yet they are often unfamiliar with this system.
This two hour interactive workshop will be presented in plain English, with lots of opportunity for questions. Topics addressed include:
- The board’s specific responsibilities in fiscal management
- The purpose and goals of a fiscal management system
- Steps a board can take to effectively create accountability and oversight
- What to look for when reviewing financial reports
- How to minimize risk of fraud or financial mismanagement
- The board’s interaction with internal and external auditors
The topics presented will include easy to understand examples and suggestions that can be quickly implemented in any organization.
Understanding and Using Customized Financial Reports
How to get fiscal reports that tell you useful information:
a) How to read standard reports
- Income Statement – Statement of Revenues and Expenses
- Year to date budget comparison
- Balance sheet
- Bank reconciliation
- Receivables and aged receivables
- Payables and aged payables
b) How to customize your chart of accounts to get the reports and information you need
- Understanding the chart of accounts
- Using “contra” accounts
- Understanding equipment purchases and other capital expenses
- Identifying costs and revenue by program areas
- How to handle grant income and expenses
- Accrual vs. cash accounting
c) How to use data to support decision making
- Setting tuition rates
- Deciding on salary increases
- Budgeting
- Cash flow decisions
How to Streamline Your Fiscal Operations Through Computer Based Accounting
We’ll use Quick Books as the demonstration for this class, but the concepts will apply to most computer based systems
a) How to use a computer based accounting system – basics
- Finding customer information
- Balance due
- Payment history
- Contact information
- Finding vendor information
- Payables due
- Payment history
- Finding banking information
- Bank account balances
- Cleared/outstanding checks
- Deposit history
- Writing computer generated checks and entering manual checks
- Producing customer statements, annual summary reports, etc.
- Producing standard financial reports
b) How to set up an automated system through Quick Books
- Setting up and editing your chart of accounts and budget
- Creating invoices and recording payments
- Recording and paying bills
- Printing checks
- Recording deposits
c) Advanced Quick Books
- Creating an effective chart of accounts
- Using memorized transactions / dangers of memorized transactions
Here is a clip from a webinar we presented on an introduction to Quick Books.