Streamline Your Non-profit's Finances with Our Reimbursement Invoice Template for NPOs

Reimbursement invoice template for NPOs

hey everyone i think we are now live today we're going to talk a little bit about what i would say i mean tons of screens open up here i would say is my biggest peeve whenever i was working for one non-profit and now that i work with lots of nonprofits on a monthly basis i would say it's probably the area that's the most time-consuming the most frustrating for um most non-profits uh that we work with and this is either like employee reimbursements whether it or expenses right that employees are charging and i have managed to lose my slides so give me one second so we're going to be talking about that today we're going to be talking about how to keep track of all of these expenses um how do we do it in an easier way this is an area where oftentimes we are able to make it paperless we're able to use technology we're able to make things a lot easier on ourselves so that's kind of my goal today um but one thing to note we um we go over one topic on these but the intention is for the topics to be fairly brief just to give you some ideas some tips tricks hacks um that we use at the charity cfo um to do like certain processes or how to handle functions of the accounting system that's really kind of a pain in the neck um but this is also intended to be an open forum so if there's anyone that has any other questions whether it's related to this topic or it's not um feel free to drop that in the q a and we can certainly um answer any of those questions whether it's about your nonprofit i may not always have all of the answers but if it's about your organization as a whole or it's about specific financial management or other areas of the business that you might need help on let me know um robert intro my name is tasha anderson i'm the founder and ceo of this firm it's called the charity cfo i started this firm interestingly enough five and a half years ago with the plan that um i'm just going to work part-time for a couple non-profits my background i did seven years as an auditor so everything i talk about is through that auditing lens and then after i did that i worked for a non-profit as their cfo for several years um i realized though when i was at that organization um which really kind of pertains to the topic today that a lot of these positions have many many hats that they wear and one of the things that i figured out was how to get the accounting down to the least amount of time and energy as ever um not because i was some sort of accounting rocket science like superstar or anything like that it was more so because i had responsibility for a lot of other things too and i needed to figure out a way to get the accounting down with the least amount of time as possible so um interestingly enough i learned quite a few things on how to keep things audit friendly um funder happy more importantly though administratively efficient so i decided after a few years in that role that i was going to step away from working for a nonprofit in that way and my hope was to lend the tips tricks and hacks i call it like tips for survival again it's great that it's in good practices it's audit friendly it's efficient but really more just for our mental capacity and really streamlining the things that we do i really try to find ways to make the administrative functions of of the nonprofit businesses much more efficient and we do that that's basically what the whole firm is now we figure out ways to do accounting it's incredible i've i've i've worked with nonprofits that used to take you know two full-time employees and we've gotten it down to like 20 hours a week worth of work right so it's significant like process improvement but um to do that i lent a lot on um the use of technology and systems and processes and those sort of things so that's sometimes what i like to share on these calls with you all um so that you get a chance to kind of know um what it is that we do and listen none of what we do is proprietary means we don't own the software we don't um it's not a secret uh but sometimes i found at least for me my experience when i worked for a nonprofit i really struggled to have the time to research better solutions once i even identified a better solution i lacked the time to actually do the implementation or even if it wasn't going to take a long time to do the implementation some of the issues were around okay what are the unintended consequences because you know rolling out new technology always has little unintended consequences if that's the case how am i gonna fix this and fix it quickly in a way that i can get my financial reporting out and everything to be good so that for me was the biggest reason why i never really pushed to roll out new changes in my accounting function and i'm sure many of you all are in that same space or your accountant um may be reluctant to roll out changes because we just we just don't know what pandora's box we're opening so today like i said we're going to talk about employee reimbursements but if there's any additional questions once i get through this it's just a handful of slides i want to keep it as high level as possible i just want to share some options and some ideas for how i see other non-profits um i think we're up to about 108 non-profits we work with on a monthly basis so everybody does things a little bit differently and i wanted to show you a couple examples of how other nonprofits are doing it let me go ahead and share my screen here and we will get going on this okay so we're talking about employee reimbursements but i actually decided as i was kind of putting this presentation together this morning that i wouldn't also talk about just credit card transactions in general so really these are the expenses that employees are charging on their um kind of on an individual basis and then um you know looking for either reimbursement from the organization or the organization is lending some sort of corporate credit card or something like that so [Music] that's going to be more of the topic i kind of decided to expand it so there what i see there's actually a few different processes that um you know non-profits are typically taking here one is like the traditional way there's a manual form in my manual i might it might just be a word document or an excel spreadsheet or something like that um that is populated it's like printed out there's attach you know the receipts to it to your credit card whether it's your personal card or or or the corporate card um you circulate it for the appropriate individuals that need to approve it and then you get a bit to your account and they process the accounts payable usually the accounts payable will then get you a paper check and then we'll give it to the employee usually because it's not a ton of money um oftentimes in my experience the employee ends up misplacing that check and then the account has to go back um avoid the check and reissue the check or some variation of that so the other option is electronic payment this is actually what we do with a lot of our clients um we keep the um everything is kind of on an electronic platform well we actually use a combination of number one and our number bullet number two and bullet number four there um other people will use kind of trying to eliminate the um paper checks right and look for more of an online system like paperless the second one is electronic payments using an online bill pay platform we like bill.com you can probably use some other um options but basically we use some sort of manual form excel spread spreadsheet or otherwise um we usually scan that or put it in some sort of digital format save it as a pdf or something scan the receipts in to attach it to that pdf and then email the whole um reimbursement to bill.com now when i say reimbursement again same process whether it's for their credit card transactions or um meeting on a corporate credit card or its employee reimbursements on um their own personal stuff then we would tag the supervisor and this software the software again is called bill.com the supervisor then reviews all the documentation to make sure that it's appropriate and then that person would approve the bill only after it's approved the process um the payment is processed to the employee through bill.com you can actually do an ach to the employee so you never have to worry about missing checks that's my preference or you can have bill.com send the employee a check for that that's how we basically handle it through um all of our clients we process it through bill.com payroll is another way um this is how it used to be when i worked at a nonprofit we put everything through payroll um employees like getting things directly deposited so they don't have to lose the checks um so you could do that through bill.com it's a similar platform um payroll has its advantages and disadvantages but it's a very similar process but rather than sending the payment documentation to your accountant you typically send it to the person that's processing payroll which might be hr payment is then processed through payroll i will tell you from an accounting perspective why i don't like the payroll process yes it's efficient for getting direct deposit to the employees but one of the problems is that um one of the problems is that oftentimes with the payroll system it's so um when validated on the ways that you can code those expenses that sometimes it'll go into one account and you'll get the payroll report and it'll just say like expense reimbursements and it'll have one line item and it will have all of the different um transactions thrown into that one line item and so from an accounting perspective it's challenging to differentiate between what is mileage what is office supplies what's program supplies what are all those different types of expenses um and that just creates a whole other separate step so which then accounting then still has to go back and look at the individual receipts to differentiate what type of expenses but for me it's actually a little bit more work from the accounting perspective to um to track that unless your payroll is set up the right way and you have multiple different codes for all the different type of expenses and sometimes that's just a lot to try to do you could have conferences in there you could have airline travel you could have accommodations you can have all the different types of supplies so you can imagine with all of the different employees how many different options you need within payroll so for that reason that's usually kind of my least favorite but it is convenient to get your employees a direct deposit the last and my personal favorite because i like to joke are actually i mean our websites as we do accounting for nonprofits but i like to joke that we're actually an i.t company that happens to do accounting for nonprofits um because we use a lot of technology we're going to talk about some of my favorite platforms here in a little bit in case you all are interested in kind of modernizing this process for you but basically with these options employees track and scan their expenses automatically so as the transactions are happening they're uploading their receipts in real time uh they get supervisor approval with some platforms you can get that at the end of the month or the end of the week or whatever duration you choose or on a transaction by transaction basis so whether that expense reimbursement is done um on an individual like personal card or on a corporate card you can get supervisor approval depending on the platform either way which is supervisor approval of course it goes without saying is always important for those audit purposes right whether it's a funder is coming in and reviewing your files or you have an independent cpa that comes in and um reviews your work the approvals drop is important and then the accounting personnel can just pull the reports and cut the checks or process the payments right away um whether again if it's on a weekly basis service on a monthly basis totally up to you so that's what the software so speaking of software um when you're kind of considering whether you want to launch a software what software you're looking at i just wrote down some key considerations we look at when we are thinking about launching a different process for our new clients right number one what type of expenses are we tracking are we tracking predominantly mileage because that could be a totally different platform is it all different sorts of expenses the employees are you know incurring on our behalf what level of approval are we looking for so do we need multiple layers of approval do we not care about approval um is it just as long as they spend within their budget they don't need approval what does that look like um also figuring out are these on a corporate card are you issuing corporate credit cards to the employees or are the employees getting reimbursed for these expenses um that there's different platforms that are a little bit more user friendly to the corporate credit card side which people really like and then of course are you looking for a paper or a paperless solution look even though postcoded um even though um you know a lot of people have moved to a paperless or wanting to move to paperless systems there are still a lot of people that prefer paper processes so kind of think in that way of course the software solution is going to be paperless so that may or may not work for you but some of the solutions that i like and there's several out there um that you can use i know quickbooks has some kind of variation of it i did not put bill.com on here and the reason why these solutions are specifically for uploading transactions as they are incurred so every single time there's an expense charge um an employee would accept ownership for that and they would upload the appropriate documentation um as they go along so there's some other platforms that you can use in conjunction with a more manual process but this is if you wanted to go all in um you know completely paperless and you want the employees to upload their documentation these would be some good platforms to use expensify you've all probably heard of that pretty popular dex formerly known as receipt bank we use receipt bank for um substantially all of our clients um i'll go over that a little bit more why and then there's another unique situation not exactly like these two but it gets you to the same result um it's called divi divi's actually owned by bill.com now i believe um so we'll talk about those and kind of the pros and cons for each one of them um here in a sec all right so first let's talk about expensify um i actually have inherited a few uh nonprofit clients that already use expensify they've been really happy with it like anything though these all come with a cost so you do have to know that uh there are costs associated with these so some of the reasons why people like expensify first and foremost you can basically link your credit card feed so whatever the transactions are coming through you can link that into expensify and your staff can actually see oh yes i charge these four expenses this week i need to upload and attach the receipts to each individual transaction you can also have approval on a transaction basis with expensify so if you are a supervisor and you want to make sure that you're monitoring as things are coming through the credit card account you are approving those obviously the expenses are already done but it at least allows you to shut the card down or to have conversations um kind of proactively rather than waiting until the month end statement comes around and then you're of course surprised it integrates really nicely with accounting and other travel software for mileage and those sort of things of course because of the approval process and the ability to attach documentation to it very audit friendly um you also can just take your smartphone um and you can do this with basically all the platforms uh rather than having to worry about getting back to the office scanning your receipts uploading your receipts um each one of them have um an app where you can just take a picture and it uploads and attaches right into the transaction so it's really easy for your accountant to kind of see what the nature of those are of course it's paperless so people really like that and another really cool benefit of expensify that's unique from the other platforms that i'll show you today that expensify uh your accountant can actually go into expensify see for example if they're personal reimbursements that your employees need to get paid back for they can actually cut the payment out of expensify and just pay the employee right away right out of that system that way you don't have to then download a report and then route it for approval and then send it to your account and then your account has to enter into quickbooks or whatever system you have and then they have to cut a check and then they have to mail it all of that is like you know a couple buttons they click and expensify and then the employees are paid right away so way easier probably for the best features i would say uh for any particular non-profit that's keeping their stuff their accounting in-house they have their own bookkeeper in-house um this is probably the best platform because it's kind of a one-stop shop and it really allows employees to um see what their transactions are now i will say and we'll talk about this in a little bit later i have a few more pro tips but to the degree that you can have if you have corporate credit cards to the degree that you can have separately issued credit cards for each individual person that would be charging that's ideal because then you can link up their accounts to their individual card when you have one card and it's shared amongst a group of people i have issues with that anyway but um it's really difficult for people to be able to identify which charges are theirs so kind of look at what your bank and how they set those up sometimes some banks will group all the credit cards into one account that said some car even despite that they can still pull out their individual transactions worst case scenario you don't have to link up the credit card bank feed meaning you don't have to pull in those some people just really like that feature because it's just a double check in case they forgot any charges that hit that credit card like software subscription and things like that next is dex this is personally what we use i like dex for a couple different reasons and because we have a little bit of a different business model right we are outsource accounting functions and we not only get credit card receipts from our clients but we get a lot of other things um basically any other documentation to substantiate revenues or expenses so we kind of use this as a virtual inbox indexed is much more than just credit card tracking but it certainly does that well too you can import the transactions again personal or business it also has different layers of approval now typically that's not on a transaction basis within decks you would create an expense reimbursement report by selecting the various expenses you want to include on that report and then you can download that and send it to your or you can tag your supervisor for approval there again it's audit friendly it's one click receipt scanning same as receipt bank of course it's paperless one thing you cannot do though you cannot pay directly out of dex you can't pay your employees there so therefore um you would have to get that report from your you know the after it's been approved by the supervisor you'd have to get each individual employee's report then you would send that to your accountant for for payment so either manually if they still issue checks or what we do we have all of our clients um build uh expense reimbursements in next and then they would send them to bill.com for payment right that's how we handle that or if it's a company issued credit card we will just look and see what transactions are hitting the corporate credit card and matching that with what's actually hitting the bank account it could go both ways you can use it both ways so dex is what we use again i would probably for any of you that's not working with me and you were doing it completely on your own i would probably go with expensify um i like dex though for us because we like to keep the credit card processing separate than the bill pay processing um because we use again dex as an inbox so some stuff is um random documents they're sending to me and then receipts that come through there we know those receipts are already have already been paid um we use build.com for a little bit different so that's that's something different and then a totally different platform although it accomplishes the same thing but i think it's really cool um divi it's actually not it actually serves as a credit card so they give you a line of credit right and for those of you that have struggled getting lines of credit for your nonprofit this is something to think about but they basically give you a line of credit and they can issue as many credit cards as you need and you give those to your employees to use as a credit card and then they charge on that line of credit and then divvy will take the money out of the bank account right replenish it then you pay it and they replenish it and it's pretty cool um one thing that i really really like about it though is that it integrates really nicely again with accounting software it's audit friendly paperless but what's really cool in the same way the employees will upload their receipts they can tag which code this is the same for all of the platforms by the way the employees upload their receipts they can tag uh each individual account um or class or department or codes or any other codes or the notes as to the nature of the expenses and those sort of things um and it's totally paperless like i said because divi automatically drafts your bank account um depending i think it's like on a weekly basis you charge the money they debit it from your account um there's no need for additional payments and your employees can just use it as a credit card one other thing i really like about divi is it has a budget tool basically you get to limit your employee usage by either certain line items like you give them a budget and then you can actually say um maybe it's you know different intervals maybe it's because of a grant or otherwise i'm adding 500 to your card and it goes to program supplies for this particular grant so that when they upload that receipt they have to tag it to program supplies because they know that's like what they're spending their money for and then they get to look at their account and they know how much is left so they know not only what they charge but they know how much is left in their budget which is pretty cool i think from a non-profit perspective so those are the three platforms that you know i've really liked and i have thought were really interesting for non-profits um if you wanted to move away from kind of like the paperless system a few other just tips and then we'll kind of wrap this topic up a little bit early and i'd love to hear in your questions so go ahead and drop any questions that you might have in the q a um section and i can get to those either if it's about um expense processing or if it's something else but a few other tips um credit cards are generally a nightmare for all accountants i'm telling you that from my own experience and we work with like i said over 100 non-profits um and and they're a nightmare for a reason and and i kind of alluded to it earlier a lot of times i see nonprofits they're afraid to give out credit cards to too many people because they think i don't know what they think is gonna happen right somebody's gonna commit fraud or they're gonna use the card wrong or whatever the biggest issue that i have found with credit cards is when you have one or two credit cards and you circulate that across the agency and then me the accountant goes and says okay which charges do i have credit cards for it happens every single month whenever i just even worked for one non-profit that there were several transactions that nobody knew what the charges were for to me that's less control than saying you know you have four different credit cards and each person that needs a credit card has a credit card and you can easily identify who the problem child is who who's the one that's not uploading their receipts or giving me the information right i can pinpoint that really easily so my tip to you is to give the appropriate people a credit card so don't be shy about that because your bank should be able to easily reduce their credit or manage their credit limits and can go up or down depending on seasonal fluctuations or whatever um and you can easily shut it down so if you're managing things kind of skipping down to the bottom i look at credit card transactions generally on a weekly basis and if your accountant flags anything suspicious you could always like you know temporarily disable a card or revoke the card or whatever so i'm all in favor of having more people have credit cards so that your accountants can really pinpoint who the problem is um next train your team on their budgets it's also a nightmare because credit cards you're getting all these receipts you have no idea what these are for you have no idea which grant they're for you have no idea which department they're for and if you're a more complex organization tracking your expenses by your grant by your department by your accounts are really important and i know i used to work in an organization that at that time had 85 employees and we had so many credit card charges and we had i think four different departments but in addition to the four different departments we had i can't even tell you we had 14 government contracts i don't even know how many private foundation grants that i needed to keep track of i couldn't even tell you so for me then to have to go hunt down um the detailed information is to okay what grant is this for or what you know is his first specific camp because i know this particular funder pays this camp or whatever it is i had to go hunt down that information so just really bog down the account with that level of detail so train your team on their budgets let them understand like which accounts should they be spending how much should they be spending on an annual basis make them manage those budgets make them identify on their receipts you know what what are these expenses what are they for and what account is it going to so that hopefully your accounting your accountant is preparing department reports if that's appropriate and your department heads that have these credit cards can determine that charge seems reasonable that's what i would expect or sometimes if there's a coding error meaning your account you know had a data entry issue they could identify those problems to fix them and kind of serve as a second set of eyes on your account so i'm all in favor of getting as many people on your team informed knowledgeable understanding what their budget is being accountable for their budget tracking their expenses um and managing their own receipts and really the only way to do that is to get them a credit card or have a really robust employee expense reimbursement process or like i said consider something like divi where you can really manage their budget and you can really manage um kind of their their user activity so that's what i have um i'm gonna open it up to questions if anybody has any specific questions about any of these platforms or the processes in general or issues we've seen in audits or anything like that let me know um but while i'm still sharing my screen because i'll turn it off here a little bit i'm gonna do another shameless vlog i do this every week so or every other week rather when we're on these calls i've put so much of these faqs like trainings free trainings into this charity cfo university check that out the charity cfo university there's two hours of free training crash course and non-profit accounting share it with others share with people you know um totally no commitments there there is some expanded course um really low price point 29 bucks but if you need to okay now that i have the foundation i actually need to learn how to do some of this stuff i need to do it myself i've actually walked you through how to do that as well and then last of course you know if you have any questions um that come up even after always feel free to reach out you can follow us on any social media platform you can find me on linkedin visit our website schedule some time to chat with me if you have other um questions about your accounting or how we might be able to help you with your accounting i'm happy to go over that so that is basically it in a nutshell um there's a lot we could probably go over but probably nothing that we need to um exhaust today because there's so many different variables so many different options anybody have any questions um if not we can go ahead and wrap up this conversation early uh we're gonna be doing another um we do these webinars usually every other week on totally different topics so if you have other topics that you'd like to go over feel free to shoot me an email send me a message on slack are not slack linkedin um or shoot it in here and i'm happy to uh i'm happy to um happy to answer those questions all right well if any of you all um like i said have any future topics you want us to go over pain points in your business that you're really struggling with feel free to shoot me a message email me our facebook group as well um if you haven't just search for a modern nonprofit uh in facebook and you can join our facebook group and you can always drop your questions there i personally moderated along with my business partner um he's on vacation today tim hudson so uh he also moderates that group and we're happy to answer any questions you have best of luck to everybody um have a great weekend and we'll see you all in a couple weeks hopefully you found this good bye