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Dropbox invoice for non-profit organizations

I am really cautious about saying one software should do all of the things that you need and so today we're going to talk a little bit about QuickBooks online and some features that you are not using and you should be and again although the software is not an end all BR there are some things that I find that most non-profits are under utilizing and it can help streamline their accounting process better and so let's talk about it [Music] first up is the bank feed I cannot tell you how many organizations are still not using it I will log in and I see hundreds of transactions sitting for review yet they are caught up in their reconciliations there's transactions in there and I'm like hmm are you going in and manually adding those transactions every month that is such a Time suck you need to be using the bank fee by using the bank feed you can connect your payment Gateway so that stripe you know in PayPal you can connect all of your bank accounts whether that's your checking accounts your saving accounts you know your reserves right and your credit card accounts right and so what I find is that either clients are just not using the bank feed at all or they're half using it and what I mean by that is you're connecting some accounts but not others and one of the things that we've been seeing actually more common recently is credit card accounts not being connected but bank accounts being connected and the reason we know that the client has a credit card is because we'll be reconciling let's just say the bank account for an example and we'll see a payment to Discover a payment to American Express now from the client standpoint it's oh we're capturing that but no we are not capturing the full picture and in essence your financials are not really telling the full story so if I'm seeing that you paid American Express you know 2 500 for your you know your last bill what was that for what was that 2500 spent on that's what we're missing right because American Express is not connected and so one of the things that we require and that we urge all clients to be doing is connecting every single bank and credit card account and connecting your payment gateways so that we have a very clear picture on all funds moving through the organization it is not just the bank accounts that are important if money is moving anywhere else we need to be aware of that and it needs to be connected so that it can all be flowing through QuickBooks the second feature that most nonprofits are under utilizing is the QuickBooks receipt capture feature so if you go into your QuickBooks online account you log in you'll see that you have this feature and what it essentially is that you are able to either upload drag and drop or email receipts directly to your QuickBooks account the reason why I really love this feature is because it helps us to get and keep clients audit ready all within the system so if there are certain expenses that we are accounting for we can attach the receipt right if there are certain income items we are accounting for we can attach the deposit slip if it's linked to a um an agreement right or something like that we can attach that to the transaction but what this does is that when your audit kicks off and your auditor is selecting samples we don't have to run into different places to then download that support So when they select let's just say for example these five transactions over here that they are going to be reviewing and looking into we can literally go directly into QuickBooks and provide them with the supporting documentation for those specific expenses also it helps to eliminate using too many different softwares and tools and so we'll have some clients who is saving receipts and supporting documentation in Dropbox some are saving it in Google Drive right and so doing nothing in QuickBooks and so when it comes time for the audit to kick off we're having to go to different places to actually download the information and then also when it comes to review not only do we have to look at QuickBooks but then we also have to look in these different external areas for the supporting documentation it just helps to move things along quicker it helps to streamline the accounting process because essentially we want you to spend your time where it is needed not on doing these many things that could be fixed or done by something that's automated or streamlined the third feature that we find is underutilized is classes using classes so here's the thing someone commented on a previous video of mine where I talked about the chart of accounts and they said that they were lost after I didn't mention that we should be tracking functional expenses in the chart of accounts we leave functional expenses to classes and this is why your chart of accounts can be kept to Natural categories and simple so that when you run your financial statements you're able to run it at that high level but then also you can drill down at your leisure at the level of detail you want or don't want when you duck everything in the chart of accounts you have very little options as to how to simplify that and if you end up having to simplify it most times you have to export it then manipulate it we don't want you to have to do that when the transactions flow through QuickBooks right because you should be using a bank fee we classify every transaction is it a fundraising expense is it a programmatic expense is it an admin expense the reason why this is important so when you want to you can run a p l by class which will show you the breakdown of these three functional expenses also when you report on your 990 you have to indicate what falls in those functional expenses instead of trying to do all this math at the end of the year if you have been classifying all your expenses throughout the year as part of your monthly close you literally have to run your p l by class export it and then provide it to your tax accountant and they can see what all the functional expenses lie now these aren't some magical features or anything like that but it does help to streamline the accounting process it also helps to helps to give you back some of your time right too often I think you get caught up in spending time all the little mini things and manual things when you could be that time can best be spent doing other things that add more value to the organization and add more value one to the fiscal function one of the things that we work here on Visionary at Visionary Accounting Group and doing is like constantly how can we improve the accounting process right how can we minimize the amount of manual work how can we minimize the amount of manual workarounds and and so if you implement using these three features I promise you it will save you time when it comes to your month in close but also your year in reporting it also upgrades your monthly reporting right because not only are you just running a statement of activities and looking at this high level now you can drill down right you ran a fundraiser how profitable was it you won't know if you haven't been tracking what came in specifically for that fundraiser and what you spent specifically to put that fundraiser on right it allows you to really dig into the details and see what's costing you right how will you know how profitable or not a certain program is if you're not tracking the expenses and the cost to manage these things right and so if you are also a non-profit that is managing government funds typically you have to invoice for these how are you tracking what you are spending on these individual contracts utilize the features that come with the software it's there for a reason now if you have any questions about these features or any other feature that you'd like me to dive deeper are into please leave a comment in this video and we'll schedule that to come out for another time other than that I hope this was really really helpful like subscribe do all other things and I'll see you guys in the next video [Music]