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Sample invoice for consulting services for non-profit organizations

[Music] hi welcome to valuationpodcast.com a podcast and video series about all things related to business and valuation my name is melissa gregg and i own a valuation company in st louis missouri i have the privilege of discussing non-profit organizations accounting strategic planning and management today with tasha anderson a cpa and non-profit accounting expert in st louis missouri welcome tasha how are you i'm great thanks so much for having me today awesome so you started your accounting firm the charity cfo in order to focus on accounting services for non-profit organizations so let's just start with something basic which is kind of explaining some of these simple concepts for our listeners such as what is a non-profit organization and is it the same as a non-profit foundation or association or are we getting them all confused so i think in a very basic way we can describe a non-profit organization as a designation that the state or the feds will give you it's a type of business and i like to joke that nonprofit is a tax status not a business model but that's really what it is it's really just a tax status much like you might consider a c corporation or an s corporation a partnership a sole proprietor and underneath the title of nonprofit organization you will actually have different types of businesses including foundations associations or what a lot of people think about nonprofit organizations are those that fall under the 501c3 that are public charity but you might also underneath that have different things that um you might not think about so for example churches or houses of worship could technically be a 501c3 so that is technically a non-profit but the words get a little bit confusing uh but ultimately a non-profit organization is really just a tax status and a designation and underneath that you're going to have different types of organizations depending on what the purpose or operations of your organization what specifically it does the irs has different designations for different types of missions and so i think that some people when they think of non-profits they don't necessarily understand the concept so because they're like well some of these nonprofits are actually making money so isn't that a profit organization and so can you help us kind of you know these nonprofits are getting money but it what does that really mean in that space i get that question a lot a lot of times from donors should they be making a profit or have surpluses at the end of the year and also from founders or ceos of a nonprofit how much profit should i be able to make how much should i be able to retain and frankly especially now in this economic uncertainty many of my clients are fair i would say better than other types of small businesses for example restaurants because they are encouraged and it is best practices to operate at least for a period of time with a surplus to build what we call a reserve so in the absence of surpluses or profits we don't accumulate a savings which is just like any other business or you know your personal income if you spend more than you take in you're never going to be able to save and if you don't save then you can't weather economic hardships like a loss of a significant contract loss of a particular donor additional increases in expenses that maybe you didn't plan for and in most cases most charity watchdogs including the better business bureau charity navigator or even funders like united way have set best practice standards to say a minimum of 25 of their operations so if they're in a million dollar organization they should have 250 000 dollars sitting in a reserve or savings account to weather some of those uncertainties and without a surplus this is what i tell people without a surplus you're never going to be able to do that and interestingly um i've did an entire analysis earlier this year in response to some of the economic volatility with either the stock market or just in general and most of my clients i had about 65 clients at the time and i think all but 10 had an excess of 90 days of cash and frankly i don't know that many small businesses that operate in that way and although we did experience hardships with loss of funding or the volatility with stock market for those organizations that have investments but because they had that savings account they were able to retain staff they were able to continue programming in spite of temporary losses and funding which which has been really great which has been a really important piece of this you know going through this kind of economic cycle if you will um but i think another thing that people get a little bit confused on and they think that non-profits are only focused on fundraising but what do you see as some of the you know an additional biggest concern in this nonprofit sector yeah i think we think about fundraising in the sense of thinking about that public charity that everybody makes donations crowd fundraising and since i've been working with nonprofits which has been about 15 years now more and more nonprofits are operating with an entrepreneurial mindset meaning they're looking for ways to earn revenue and not simply rely on fundraising dollars as you would imagine losing funders or with the stock market changing pretty significantly um to the to the positive or the negative it can create a lot of volatility in their ability to continue their programming so more organizations have focused on diversifying their revenue oftentimes with earned revenue some have received contracts or competed with contracts for for-profit businesses particularly government contracts for different public services they've created either special events or they've diversified their marketing to not simply being the you know the mailers or the annual reports that they sent out with you know what essentially looks like an offering envelope that you have to send back many are targeting digital marketing they're looking for crowd fundraising they're looking for sponsorships they're really diversifying what they're doing so of course revenue is really important but also being really intentional on their expenses and one of the things that i do some of my favorite clients are those that are really entrepreneurial in the sense of how can we work as efficiently as possible so investing in things that are going to save a tremendous amount of man hours time energy and it's kind of interesting how much uh automation and integration some of my non-profit clients have had or use within their ongoing operations and how that might be different certainly different from some other government sources you know just comparing what they prepare internally with what how they have to report it's so significantly different because nonprofits know in order to compete they have to stay relevant they have to use technology they have to integrate things so they're managing to the expenses and finding the smartest way to do things uh and being resourceful as possible so i think they're focused on a lot of things right now in addition to just the normal operations of how do you bring money in and how do you spend money more and more donors are asking for quality outcomes and that's something that i think people underestimate what that looks like i used to be a cfo of a non-profit and we put together all of the contracts that we had which were 14 different government contracts and we listed all of the outcomes that we had to report on at some point during the year and we had four pages front and back with them with a reasonable font size too of different outcomes that we had to report on four pages front and back of the different outcomes so i think people don't realize the level of accountability i know that word transparency is a buzz word right now in the industry but really it's not just transparency on the numbers it's also transparency on the programs what are they doing what are they expecting to do so nonprofits are really trying to juggle all of the known and standard you know compliance and reporting requirements that they're subject to but how do they constantly pivot and adapt to the significant changes in the outcome reporting everybody wants something different they want to report in a different way and the best way to do that is through technology so we've seen a huge shift in that space too well and i think that as because one of it is bringing the money in the second is how you spend it and how you're efficient with it and you know for a firm like yours or any accounting firm you can come in and just do the simple you know check this box and okay here's your tax return and and go on your way but you guys offer a little bit more in helping really these nonprofits be successful which is a little different than just offering accounting services right so what are some of the other ways that you help these firms kind of maybe be more efficient or do you go in and give them some strategic planning or strategic suggestions of how to run the company yeah i like to joke that on my website it says i do accounting services for non-profits but i tell my clients we're actually an i.t company that happens to do accounting services for non-profits so in addition to you know being as i mentioned a cfo at one point and now i like to say i'm a cfo for many i was an auditor for many years in public accounting and and i get audited i think i've been audited every week since the third week of january and i think i have an audit going on this week as well so consistently since the third week of january we're under audit so for my survival and um the benefit of my employees mental health we have to put plans and processes in place to make sure that with any level of confidence we can get through those things so some of the things that we look at is what is the most efficient from a not just dollars but man hours right efficiency and and and the employees effort both on my side and their side and then what is the technology that's going to be consistent accurate and timely for the benefit of getting through any of these particular audits for example if we have the requirement that every single invoice has to be approved by two different signatures how can we use technology to capture that signature digitally and then file that in a place that can be retrieved with just a few clicks rather than the old way of doing it and by by old way i mean five years ago when i used to be a cfo of a non-profit where you have to shuffle the paper all around the office you have to hunt down a board member outside of your four walls and hope that they're not traveling or out of town and then you have to you know cut the manual check mail it and then you have to file it and at the end of the year then you have to move those files out of your file cabinet and into storage and and then when the auditors come out and want you to retrieve some some bills then they will require you to go back to the storage shed and pull all the stuff out it's just such a manual process and frankly those processes when you're just trying to survive and get the check out the door you forgot one of those signatures and then of course the auditors are going to dig you for that so how can we create systems that are just full proof and focusing more on systems and the efficiency of those systems that's really what accounting is right uh systems and if you can develop what that flow of information can look like it could not just for the nonprofit space but the for-profit i think the challenge of the nonprofit we don't have the time capacity or money oftentimes and those resources to invest in how do we work smarter more proactively i will confess i didn't have the time capacity or money back when i was running an accounting department at a non-profit even if you know there's better solutions you don't have the time to research them and even if you do know what they the solution should be you certainly don't have time to implement them so the number one thing that we do we go in we assess what is the flow of information where can we improve it and my team is the integrator my team is the one implementing it and say okay this is a system we agree on and you have to trust that this is the best way to do it for the benefit of us completing an audit or for anyone to come any question do we have ex you know do we have receipts do we have documentation do we have signed contracts do we have our house in order we do because we have a system for that and so that's what my team does uh and that's what i advise any nonprofit whether they choose to work with us or otherwise that they develop workflows and systems that will help them be consistent with any requirement regardless of who comes in and when they come in we're ready for it at any time well and i think that those are some of the you know people don't quite understand how much technology can help you save hours in the whole process you know if you're relying on one piece of paper or several piece of papers with the original signatures that's just crazy you know there are so many things that can help do things different but that's just kind of one example that i think is really helpful another thing you know let's talk about some of the differences in accounting for a non-profit organization and as opposed to a for-profit business i mean are they is it basically the same type of accounting are are there some like unique differences yeah in some ways they're very similar so before i focused a lot of energy working in the nonprofit space i used to spend a lot of time in the construction space and nonprofits if i were to compare it to anything like a for-profit business imagine a business that tracks all of their revenues and expenses by individual project construction is a great example by job right or a creative firm that has to track revenues and expenses by client to make sure they're assessing what the profitability is by that client the nonprofit has to do that in a very similar way but they do it by grant so not necessarily managing the profitability but how much of those dollars that we received are still eligible for spending right and we have to track that so balancing um how much revenue do we still have to spend by funders so very similar like a construction company or or anyone else that would manage to buy project but then also are you carrying it over for the next fiscal year are we going to be spending it should we budget to spend it so we're really kind of morphing this idea of project or job costing combined with crossing fiscal years and also not just you spend it in a certain time period but you must spend it on purple pens rather than red pens so tracking not just the timing of things but the purpose of things and then who the individual donors are and then also reporting on that which of course the reporting requirements for funders are generally all different as well they like to look at them in different ways so it's a little bit of a balancing act in many ways but for the most part it it seems complex because you have so many different types of jobs you're trying to track at any given time and frankly the nonprofit space struggles on that more than they would probably like to admit it's just really difficult and not because conceptually it's difficult it's designing the system and having the right person skilled and how to use that system and by system i'm truly talking about the accounting software at this time how to set it up the right way and how to consistently apply things the right way and once you do that it becomes much much easier but going back to my point before many non-profit organizations lack the experience the skill set or or just the time or money available to properly set that up and oftentimes it's a training issue or it's just a funding issue and a reinvestment issue but it's just like any other for-profit business it has to track on a really granular level well and i think if i'm a non-profit and i'm looking at tasha anderson and her company and i'm like oh my gosh i can't afford this like i don't barely have enough money to do what i need to do like what do you say to some of those because obviously you're doing a tremendous amount of work in this space and so it's not just like oh i'm only working for the nonprofits that have this huge cash flow um you know what do you say to some of those people that are like i don't know if i can afford to have an accountant yeah and i think this probably applies with for-profit businesses as well i as i mentioned i used to work in different industries besides just non-profit but i think accounting is just an area that a lot of people in the nonprofit space just don't understand they generally come through the programmatic side whether it's healthcare education or social services right they don't have a business background and they certainly don't have a specialty in accounting and so if people are telling you you know we can't do x y z or we can't create this reporting or we can't have this tracking because of a limitation of the system and the system that we use is quickbooks it's an out of the box solution it's really inexpensive it's affordable um it's not proprietary it can be built in a number of different ways and and utilized um oftentimes it's underutilized and so what nonprofits do and i suspect this is true for for-profits that because you don't understand what the solution should be we assume it's a capacity issue so what a lot of nonprofits will then do and i'm sure for profits too because i've seen this in practice they will hire more people thinking it's a capacity issue it's generally not a capacity issue it's a workflow it's a system it's a technology issue and if you have the right person with the right workflows and you really kind of re-engineered that you can save a lot of time and then subsequently save a lot of money and just kind of an example there was an organization we were working with that has consistently struggled with invoicing they did the services they had a source of revenue they simply had to compile information and send it to the funder and then if the funder kicked it back they had to troubleshoot it and resubmit it much like healthcare right i mean you have to submit invoices and troubleshoot for insurance billing they had two full-time people that they were paying upwards of 250 000 a year to do this and they were consistently behind so if they're not getting cash what's happening they're in a cash flow crisis they're laying people off they're you know reducing programs because they didn't have the cash to employ the people that the resources were out there they just had no way to get it and we came in and reduced their accounting budget by a fifth so we charge 50 000 rather than 250 000 and they have no collectivity issues at all and their cash flow is higher than it's been in probably five years and we've saved them money so a lot of times it's not i can't afford it it's you have to hire the right person and i'm not saying i'm the right person for everyone but if someone's telling you it can't be done i would get a second opinion because more likely than not it's just a limitation on their skill set and their training and their usability of the system maybe how the system's set up rather than we just need to hire more people well and i think that that you know in general even tech savvy even business savvy people kind of always default to like how it's been done before and this is how it's always been done we send out these pretty little invoices in the actual mail and and as opposed to using something that's online that sends automated updates that requests the information that it pays online goes directly you know those types of things i think are just the default um for most but once you get past the accounting do you also get involved in the strategic planning for these non-profit organizations or do you work with management to advance any of their leadership skills is that something you know i would imagine you kind of get pulled into in some capacity because a lot of accounting firms also do some management consulting so is this an area you get involved in yeah it's not one that i publicly uh advertise uh in a sense of we don't do one-off consulting work but for our existing clients uh you know i structured my firm a little bit differently in the sense that all of my clients whether they like it or not are getting kind of a cfo service right we're gonna share our opinions and our thoughts and our recommendations and observations regardless if you thought you were just hiring a bookkeeper that kind of comes by default uh so oftentimes we'll get involved in the strategic planning particularly as it relates to budgeting and planning for future years that's a very busy time for us right now that we're doing that and we also look at other for example i have one client right now that's uh rebuilding their fundraising program you know their whole department from the ground up and we're running different numbers and scenarios for who should we have in place um what should the roi be on the investment of fundraising and also the same with hr you know at what point do we need to hire an hr person so constantly reevaluating strategic decisions that a business is going to make for example some of our clients are evaluating should we go into government billing particularly medicaid and if so what does that look like from an administrative perspective and is it worthwhile to pursue those types of funding sources or not and then of course many of my clients they just come from all different spaces with respect to understanding how the business of a non-profit runs because again it really is a business and many of my clients are very savvy and they understand uh the finances particularly uh how they impact all of the areas of the business and some just don't like i mentioned earlier they come from more of a programmatic background and because of that we do a lot of kind of coaching and advisory services on this is what we're looking at this is what's on our radar this is what you should be looking at these are the things you should understand in the event you're asked by a funder or a board member or anyone you know why this area is struggling i don't like to be surprised as the ceo of my business um and i don't want our clients to be surprised or caught off guard in any way so those are certainly things that we include just ongoing with the sort with the scope of work that we offer well and i think that that's a very interesting nuance that you just said is that every time you're not really coming from a bookkeeper standpoint you're coming from a cfo and that's even more important but in that capacity you know traditionally i've seen that the accounting firm or the consultants are hired by the board of directors and so usually they go through a vetting process or you know the board of directors will just know a few accounting firms that they work with but non-profit accounting is different than for-profit accounting and so let's talk a little bit like how do you get involved with the board of directors as well yeah most of our clients have a pretty active finance committee including board members and we meet with them on a fairly regular basis especially new clients that are hiring us for one reason or another right generally it's we're replacing um an employee that was either there part-time or full-time um some are planned transition some are much more abrupt as you can imagine sometimes we're brought in in the case i mentioned before with the struggling accounting department they were paying a lot of money to triage and do some financial crisis management and so certainly the board members are involved in that level but we generally have ongoing conversations especially in the beginning but ongoing once we take a little bit more of a back seat and we get into a nice rhythm and groove we provide pretty extensive financial reports that include an executive summary and if you've ever sat on a board um you'll notice kind of a theme at board meetings everybody will kind of sit quiet uh the treasurer might do a brief overview on the financial position are there any questions there's really any questions and then they move on to the next agenda item and what i realized is it's not that people don't care they're oftentimes intimidated by all of the numbers on the pages and frankly they don't spend enough time to try to interpret what do those mean and more importantly they don't understand the context behind the numbers so we give a written narrative to be shared with the board members that give the story behind the numbers this is up or down because of this change in programming this is up or down because the seasonal nature of this event this is up or down because of you know timing of when we budgeted it would be spended and when it's actually being spent right that's going to give them more information to ask educated questions and feel more confident in asking those questions so that's made a tremendous difference for our clients and i think they're much more involved in the budgeting process and ongoing reporting because of it well it seems like a more proactive way to look at finances as opposed to reactive because if they're not paying attention and then at the end of the year or something is like well wait how did we not have this money or why did this project get sideways you know i agree a lot of times even in the valuation world we have to give a descriptive you know the numbers tell a story to us you know so you work with numbers i work with numbers and we see numbers different we see the story in the numbers but not everybody is capable of doing that you know a lot of times they just see numbers and they all look like some foreign code um but that's that that's a great point um so and a couple other things what if you if you are seeing so many non-profits can you give any like one of your best accounting tips or advice for somebody who either wanted to start into this space or maybe they want to just get to the next level and have a cfo you know what would be some of your uh best accounting tips so probably for somebody that's getting started know that there's a lot of information out there that's of low cost or free there's some really great youtube videos i know that sounds funny but you can teach yourself anything with some youtube videos uh you can get some proprietary software you don't have to get a fancy software um you can get quickbooks that's what we use for most of our clients you can watch some youtube videos to understand how you're supposed to be doing the bookkeeping um but certainly once you start feeling a little uncomfortable with keeping up with the volume of transactions or keeping copies of the receipts and just making sure all your eyes are daughter to tease across accounting is one of those things i call it an insurance policy for reputation management i've seen too many non-profits lose credibility and had their reputation damaged because some innocent missteps they did not intend to do anything maliciously but once you tarnish that reputation it's really difficult to rewrite that narrative and that dialogue about what your organization is doing and distracts from the programming that you're doing so i recommend to people to hire accountants proactively to keep you in good standing with all of those folks and and i do have a fair amount of people that reach out to us proactively um that maybe have outgrown their existing accountant or maybe they've been doing it themselves or they have a volunteer bookkeeper and they know that's not sustainable especially if the volume is grown but then i also have certainly people that reach out to me very reactively the irs has been sending them notices they realize they've been out of compliance with their state and once you make too many missteps like that the the course of correction is just so difficult time consuming and often it's pretty costly so to get started um there's some really good books on amazon if you just you know get on there and search for you know nonprofit accounting books there's a woman named lisa london i don't know her i have no affiliation with her at all she's writes some really nice books in tentative for non-accountants so it's written for non-accountants for the benefit of ceos or founders of nonprofits she uses quickbooks it's called quickbooks for small nonprofits and churches i think lisa london is her name so that's a good supplemental resource um what i like about quickbooks too there's so many free like i said youtube is a great place but quickbooks themselves have really great free training um and you can find just about anybody can figure out quickbooks it's designed to be very user friendly and it's designed for a small business owner it's not designed for an accountant so it's very intuitive no pun intended it isn't an intuit program um but just start there just start there and then once you get to a place of i'm not able to keep up with it start looking to hire someone and also i guess most importantly understand the best piece of advice if you've been designated from the irs as a non-profit regardless if you have activity or not the irs does not care you still have an obligation to file a tax return and a lot of people don't realize that well tasha i only brought in a couple thousand dollars last year it does not matter it's not that you know i think some people think of it as a personal tax return well if i don't file then i'm just not going to get the refund and the irs gets my money so it's not a big deal not that case in fact if you fail to file three years in a row they will revoke your status and you'll have to start all over again okay so get informed every state of course is different so get informed about what your state requires you to file and know that the irs regardless requires you to file a tax return and if you do less than 50 000 a year it takes about five minutes to submit the tax return to the to the and i don't mean that because i'm an accountant i mean it's like five or six fields that you go on the irish website and you populate you know what's your straight address you know your total assets or revenue but less than 50 000 yes or no it's very very simple it's like five fields you have to populate you don't pay anybody to do that um you could do that yourself you have some nice instructions on there too so yeah it's just a few minutes but don't lose sight of what the state requires and what the irs requires well and a lot of these things are on you know i mean i think that the way we learn in general is changing because a lot of this information is available for free and quickbooks is now online which i know a lot of people who in the past have always had it on their desktop you know are a little bit um frustrated with that fact but i think the reality is if you get used to using technology which means you need to practice and you need to you know like dive into it then i think that it can really um cut some costs so you have given us so much information but we don't know as much about you so can you tell us kind of what your path to becoming an accountant was and then you obviously have a passion for focusing on non-profit organizations so maybe we can talk of how how'd you get to that space yeah so the accounting was a little of a practical decision uh i was in business school and the economy was suffering um back in 2006 2007 i was in i was in college when 9 11 happened and you can imagine all the economic downturn from from that that effect and i liked business and i really enjoyed marketing and i really enjoyed uh the international business idea and i knew i would be in business but i went into accounting because i realized i could probably do a lot of things within business with an accounting background but i couldn't necessarily do accounting or finance um or make you know accounting and finance decisions without a lot of training if i were to choose some other you know degree program so it was purely practical um i didn't know what i was going to do with my life so i ended up in public accounting and i did that for about seven years and it's kind of a funny story um nonprofits very much i think it's i think it's still very much true are very much the stepchildren of professional services uh people do it because we have bleeding hearts and they do it to help out a non-profit but most professionals understanding that the accounting for nonprofits is a little bit more challenging and they don't come from that background generally don't prefer to work with that industry particularly because they don't have a lot of money to pay you so very few people want to do more work for less money i'm glad for punishment i guess in that way and me like every other person that finds themselves a non-profit you never plan it it just happens one of the things i realized when i would go in and try to audit these clients they were just a mess they were a disaster and it wasn't that they were trying to be difficult or non-compliant they just didn't know and then i realized how many people disliked serving this particular industry but how much help they needed into what a much higher standard that they have to be held to so i realized listen somebody's gotta devote more of their time to this space and it might as well be me so i left public accounting i took a job as a cfo for one non-profit um i did that for four years and i realized i thought it was difficult then as an auditor i had no idea what i was walking into the four pages of outcomes as i mentioned and i out of survival figured out a way to get their accounting down to just about 10 to 15 hours a week and then about 6 million a year so this is not a small organization and um you know i learned so much about the operational side of the business so not just accounting but hr risk management facilities um of a funny story where i went into a client and she was giving me a tour and i thought wow those gallery light bulbs must be really expensive aren't they and she looked at me and said we can't afford to replace them that's why they're not illuminated and i said why do i ask these questions why do i see these things and it's because of the operational side of it is so much more difficult um i think than we ever realized so that's where i kept having people come to me and say tasha do you know anybody that can do accounting i know you're working with this one organization but you know anyone else and the truth is i just didn't um and not at a level of price that most nonprofits can afford so i always had this vision of applying all the things i've learned in these different roles to a space that was committed to doing it as efficiently as possible and charging a fair price and so four and a half years ago i started this firm i plan to have no employees i plan to have no office i plan on having a couple clients we now have 69 clients nationwide i have a team of 10 so that didn't work out so well for me but we're able to really help a lot of people and almost all of our business comes through referrals which has been incredible um but i think people like that combination of yes you are very black and white accountant and there's certain things we have to do but we also understand the operational challenges and understanding that what do we have to do but how can we get there that's not going to be administratively burdensome for for our clients so that's why i got in space it was kind of accidental um and a little strategic but it's it's really awesome to be able to help others that i think many people have kind of given up on or or felt like they couldn't be successful in uh and we're just here to continue to solve that problem so um i think that that i had intended that to be the last question but i do have one more question this is what you said because i think a big um piece that people have to understand is that you have the perspective from the other side the auditor that comes in now one thing that i know our our listeners and our population love to know about is that what if you're a non-profit and you do receive a notice from the irs either about getting audited or maybe some tax deficiency or something like that can you you know obviously you don't know how to solve the problem but what would be their next step like assuming that they don't they don't even know what to do at that point like what's kind of the first or second step that they should do in that capacity from your experience um kind of being in all different forms of the auditing process yeah so the irs and my 15 years of working in the nonprofit space i've yet to see the irs come in and actually audit a nonprofit now they will revoke status as they might challenge your status and say you're not really a public charity or a foundation or something like that they might revoke your status i've never actually seen the irs coming in audit that's that i have seen department of labor come in an audit i've seen the irs knock on your door because you failed to pay your payroll taxes certainly i've seen that so if you get a notice you likely have a cpa you've been working with because they file your tax returns start there if nothing else uh or if you have a board member that's an attorney start there and just ask those questions now the audits come in place because a couple reasons first step your state not all states some states require an audit once you hit a certain threshold and a non-profit might cross that threshold and not even realize that their state requires an audit for example i think the state of illinois once you cross three hundred thousand dollars they require an audit the state of missouri has no threshold they will never require an audit right so generally an audit is mandated by your bank or a funder so read your contracts closely when you get those dollars to see if it's now going to trigger you to have an audit first and foremost um or stay informed about what your state requires but like i said engage with the cpa generally like i said the irs i've not seen an irs come in and actually audit but they would audit you know like i said payroll taxes or they might challenge your designation your your nonprofit status those are the main things but reach out to a cpa um or an attorney if nothing else uh quickly please don't delay on that because you will get fines penalties um or possibly have your status revoked if you turn a blind eye to that well and that i think is a very good piece of advice because again i'm just assuming you know that oh these audits and oh my gosh whatever i mean the devils and the details you know this is something that a traditional accountant may not understand about the state of illinois about the state of missouri now you're operating in tennessee what's going to happen now and i think that that's a very important not that it's the answer to everything but knowing your state specifics and what could maybe lose your capability of operating nonprofit is a huge deal and so i think that that alone is kind of why you should reach out to somebody that has experience in that sector um is there anything that we didn't cover that you thought that nonprofits really should know or do you think we've hit on a lot of different topics here i think we've covered all of it um you know i think my biggest piece of advice is stay organized and keep your you know paperwork house if you will together and in order and understand what you're signing up for um and if you're not a details person as many of the people in the nonprofit space aren't they're they're more of a creative or people-focused individuals and not necessarily uh the detailed brain um you know recruit someone to help assist with those things and if you are working on a or if you're volunteering on a board understand the basic requirements as well and if nothing else ask those questions or at least do a little bit of research there's some great websites out there um i can share the link uh it's just a summary of all of the state requirements so every time i get on the phone with a client i immediately say oh you're registered in tennessee this is what you're subject to um we know what the irs already requires the feds but the state is where it varies so i can share that link with you all and it's a really easy resource and you can get informed really quickly well and again to remind people that they may want to staff up and hire an internal bookkeeper internal cfo or something like that but there may be more economical ways of getting the same advice or better advice and having somebody like your firm really stepping in and doing those things we're going to provide all the information about how to contact you if you give us some links to those resources we'll certainly include them but we really appreciate it tasha uh for you sharing all your knowledge today thanks so much thank you it's been fun all right [Music] you