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Format for billing client for non-profit organizations

I have been dying to do a video on non-profit financials I think it's a super important aspect of the sector but I'm a non-profit coach and I know a lot about fundraising and a lot about non-profit marketing but probably just enough about non-profit financials to be dangerous so I figured I'd bring in a specialist to talk to you today so we have Rachel Peterson who is a certified non-profit accounting specialist and she's here to talk to us about the non-profit chart of accounts in particular so with that let's welcome Rachel [Music] well I am so excited to have you I got to know you on social media and I love what you're doing so I thought I'd bring you on because I I had said in the intro I know enough to be dangerous about non-profit accounting so I think we should probably talk to an expert on this and we're going to talk about specifically the non-profit chart of accounts so why don't we start for some of our our newer uh fundraising professionals what is that and how does that work yes the chart of accounts is just the framework for all of your financial statements so it's not necessarily specific to a non-profit versus a for-profit it is when you're talking accounting that is the basic what makes up everything we do in accounting okay and what in particular is the significance of it for non-profits then you have to have it in order to do any financial statement and so what what it's made up of is the revenues expenses assets liabilities so you get an invoice what is that where does that go and that's what it helps you do is classify every single thing in your business that comes in okay well I know that you have got a template for our subscribers which I will link in the description I think that would be most helpful for them to understand what are the key components of it yes yes and every non-profit is a little different some have a lot of Grants some only do contributions some have membership fees and so or fundraising Revenue some have zero some have a lot in that PDF you will see different examples of what you what your chart of accounts would look like okay so when I'm working with clients and I ask them for what is their revenue for say events or if I'm looking for Grant specifically it helps identify those areas to make some data-driven decisions exactly yep and it just breaks that down I've seen chart of accounts that are a nightmare to work with and there's a lot of fear associated with chart of account sometimes because it's this unfamiliar thing to work with and really it's just breaking down every part of your business and one of my biggest things is when I work with non-profits that have say 200 line items it's not consistent they can't say oh this is a like they have contributions but they'll have contributions categorized into four things really all you need is individual contributions and corporate donations corporate contributions not six different ones because sure one month that was applicable but it's typically not applicable year after year and that's what we're trying to get down to is how can we look at things year after year and see it consistently and see the differences and see where we need to improve things I know I've worked with one non-profit in particular that was a mess and then the process of streamlining everything and and getting everything perfect um I had a lot of Kickback from them because they knew it was going to be a lot of work it was going to change everything but what are the benefits to simplifying it oh so many um I think the biggest one is peace of mind when you go into your accounting software and you see a big mess and you know it's not right but you want it to be right but say the past executive director was doing it and doing it themselves and it wasn't consistent sometimes they put things here sometimes they put things there and so to go in and look at it your Grant Revenue say it should be a hundred thousand and it's only 75 000 and you're like there's a grant missing where did it go where did we classify that and if you don't have processes in place you can't see those issues you can't fix those issues because it's not consistent it's not time over time the same process being followed that was going to be one of my questions is what are some of the best practices and processes that non-profits could follow as an accountant the one overarching thing that um is taught is Gap standards and those are generally accepted accounting practices and they're just a set of accounting principles that every accountant is governed by and so that is how a chart of accounts is set up is following the Gap standards um two that I would um I guess highlight here are the consistency principle and the scalability um so when setting up a chart of accounts you want to do it so that it's consistent you time and time again you can say this is a contribution and one example I have is office supplies um I get clients all the time that have office supplies and then a printing account and maybe you're spending a thousand dollars printing materials but in today's day and age we just don't have that much printing maybe you're printing for a fundraiser but that is going to go into fundraising expense not printing and so one that I always go and I look at is office supplies I don't want six accounts under office supplies I want say you're anything that is kind of one-off you went to Staples and you needed something you went to Walmart and you needed something yes you could create different expense accounts for each of those but in reality you don't need to track it and it doesn't actually help your financials and that is what we're trying to accomplish is uh a big picture of where things are going not oh I went to lunch with this funder that wants to give us money where should I put this maybe I should create a new account no just put that in Mills it doesn't matter it yes or put it in fundraising um but setting up how you want to classify things and not changing or varying from that is the most important practice within that and speaking of putting it in fundraising I know that a lot of non-profits really want to keep their cost to the dollar down on their fund development so what are some ways that we could what are some different accounts that we can use for you mentioned printing could we put printing in office supplies and meals in meals rather than fundraising so that we can keep that cost on the dollar down yes because it's an admin expense you have to do those administrative tasks in order to operate and so I would say 100 if you're concerned about your fundraising budget put things into ad admin where those your when you are billing for a grant and they say they'll give you a certain percentage that percentage covers a meal with a fundraiser they they expect that they want that and um so don't don't hesitate to put things into admin and have it be covered by donations now I know as a as a a donor myself we have a charitable Foundation a family fund and uh before anyone applies it only supports domestic violence and addictions here in Canada but uh I look at the financials and I don't want to just see the annual report I want to see the audited financials to be able to make decisions and and see how are they spending their money and are they organized and you can tell a lot by an organization in terms of how organized that their financials are versus how organized they are as well yes it speaks so much to an organization and and what non-profits a huge thing that they differ in is everyone can see their 990 every year where a for-profit you don't see the financials ever the tax returns never get seen by the public unless you're publicly traded and that's a whole other thing but for a non-profit no matter how small you are your 990 goes into a public database and anybody can look at that and so if you want funding you have to have a solid foundation of financial reporting or else I think donors really struggle to give to you because you're not prudent with your funds you're not doing the doing like tracking things correctly okay now you mentioned 990 we should specify Canadian or American yes we have a lot of Canadians we have a lot of Canadian subscribers as well but mostly Americans so that's good just just for a Canadian when people know that uh there's different resources that maybe that's a good idea I'll um look for some other resources as well and you had mentioned the Gap is there any links that you can supply me that we can put in the description for that yes definitely okay all right I know that a lot of our subscribers are founders and they're doing their own books and this is one of the areas that that they struggle in so any other advice you would give to someone who started a charity and managing their own books yes my biggest thing is simplify if you have a chart of accounts that you're just overwhelmed with that you don't use accounts simplify get rid of them merge them there's so many options and software makes this so easy but if you're constantly wondering should I put it here should I put it there make it one account one example is dues and subscriptions or software and subscriptions lump that all together there's no point in saying hmm where should I put this when it doesn't matter you need big buckets to actually function and um the one other thing I would say is one of my favorite quotes which I will paraphrase is non-profits rarely fail because of their mission or purpose they fail because of their policies and procedures are not in place and that's what I've seen and as sad as it is without those policies with without those procedures you just can't make it because you don't know where your money's going you don't know where what's actually happening in your non-profit and so I'd say take the time to make it happen make it a priority and go chase your mission yeah yeah now would be the time to do it before before the growth and before the next level now is the time to do it I think your template will be most helpful so that that's wonderful yes okay well thank you so much for this I have been dying to do a video on this I just didn't want to overstep my role considering that I'm more on the fundraising and marketing end of things uh and my husband does my books so I have I'm clueless well I'm so glad you reached out and so glad that we were able to make this happen uh as a non-profit I think it's so valuable for people to hear these things and and to be able to see what's available perfect well thank you [Music]