
This is the first in a series of articles that will help you generate the appropriate reports(s) for your needs and also help assure you are using the GMS Nonprofit Accounting and Financial Management System or other software to its fullest extent. We will be talking about information provided to the Board of Directors, Executive Director, Program Staff, Funding Sources and Auditors, etc.
In order to accomplish this, you need to generate a report that gives you important but limited information about each program your organization has, no matter how small. We have seen some very creative work in Excel done by our clients to accomplish this! A supplement we have to provide you with this type of information is Supplement # 314 Board of Directors Report. It prepares three financial reports organized specifically for the Board of Directors.
The first report is a Project Financial Report which lists each project’s total expenditures including budget, current month, project total, under/over and percent of budget spent. It also lists the total receipts for each project, giving you the balance of receipts over expenditures on an individual project basis.
The second report is a Balance Sheet by Category that allows you to group selected assets, liabilities and equity accounts on your agencywide balance sheet. The category feature would allow you to do things like group all of your payroll liabilities such as taxes and deductions withheld into one liability called Payroll Deductions Payable. The third report is an Agencywide Revenue & Expenditure by Category that allows you to group selected revenue and expenditure codes. An example of this type of category is to take rent, utilities, janitorial services and building maintenance into a category called Occupancy.
These three reports will provide your Board of Directors with a concise picture of your organization’s overall financial status.
No matter what nonprofit accounting software you are using, it is important that you give the right reports to the right people within your organization.