Financial Technologies & Management- E-Newsletter for May

Upcoming Live Webinars

Dear {CONTACT.SALUTATION} 

We hope you find our monthly E-Newsletter useful for your nonprofit organization. We are pleased to provide you with access to our knowledge articles and live webinars!!

These live webinars will help Nonprofit Leaders, Treasurers, Executive Directors, Finance Directors, Finance Staff, and other Nonprofit Staff.

Our upcoming live webinars for financial management training are broken into the following areas.   Please feel free to click on any of these areas to learn more and register for these upcoming financial management training.

• Financial Management Training-Topics include Overlooked Benefits of Outsourcing Nonprofit Accounting or Why your Nonprofit should be using Nonprofit Accounting Software?  Our plan is start this back up this summer.
• Nonprofit Financial Forum-These FREE Forums are provided typically the last Thursday of the month over the lunch hour knowledge based so go ahead and register for the remaining forums this year on 6/29, 7/27, 8/31, 9/28, 10/31, and 11/30.  The topics include financial policies and procedures, grants management and cost allocation, tips for smooth audit, budgeting, financial governance and leadership, and developing effective dashboards and Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) 
• MIP Fund Accounting-General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Reporting, Financial Statements, and Drillpoint-Each webinar is 2 hours.  Please feel free to register for the FREE quarterly MIP user group meetings on Aug 24, and Oct 26.  We are pleased to also announce the we will be presenting at the MIP 14th Annual User Conference in Las Vegas on October 10-12.  Please feel free to check out the conference web site by clicking on this link.  If you do register, please email us to let us know you will be attending and also select referred by FTM which you register.  
• Nonprofit Finance Certificate-Effective Financial Management and Leadership-first part is focused on bookkeeping and accounting; and second part is focused on controller, CFO, and leadership roles.  This training is typically the last Monday of each month.   Click  here FMI and to register.

Please contact us if you have any questions or feedback about our upcoming live webinars.  Feel free to check out our FTM blog or book a meeting on my calendar.

Best Regards,

James Simpson, CPA, CFE, CITP, and CGMA.

10 Tips for Best in Class Finance Department

We have found the departments with these characteristics to be the most high functioning with the best outcomes.

10 Tips for a Best in Class Finance Department

1. Build a Stronger Finance Department.  Provide financial information to management and board.
2. Hire the right people.   Need right education and expertise.  Roles need to include accounting and controller level roles.
3. Promote a secure internal control environment.  Set proper tone at top for ethical behavior, safeguard assets, ensure right people in place, implement and enforce financial policies and procedures.
4. Perform Monthly Bank Reconciliations and Monthly Investment Account Reconciliations. Have someone outside of finance department review.
5. Education board on fiduciary responsibilities to include duty of care, duty of loyalty, and duty of obedience with board committee dedicated to financial management.
6. Timely Remit payroll tax and employee benefits.
7. Follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.  Accrual is more accurate than the other methods.
8. Conduct a financial statement audit
9. Financial Calendar to identify when things needs to happen and share with internal stakeholders.
10. Provide timely and accurate monthly financial reports.  Need to explain the financial story.  Need to forecast income, expense, and cash.

The full article includes more information regarding 10 tips

Best Practices for Financial Policies and Procedures

It is important that Nonprofit Organizations have a financial policies and procedures manual.

If you have not updated your financial policies in a while or don’t have a financial policies and procedures manual, our firm can help you develop or update your financial policies and procedures. An organization with good financial policies and procedures benefits from operating efficiencies, clear expectations, financial accountability, and training.

A financial policies and procedures manual is important for the following reasons:

• Improving your operation
• Document bookkeeping
• Document control environment
• Document control procedures
• Document accounting system.
• Lay out clear expectations
• Grant compliance
• Staff training

The manual can serve as a checklist for major financial activities that need to occur within the finance function.  Your manual will document your accounting system as well.

We would suggest you work with our firm to help you develop effective financial policies and procedures as we can help you put together an effective manual that cover all your risks areas for your organization.

Please click on the find out more for the full article and FREE Sample Nonprofit Financial Policies and Procedures Manual.

Eight reasons to outsource your Nonprofit Accounting

The current employment market has nonprofits looking more externally to obtain necessary accounting talent and seeing significant increases and retention issues with internal accounting staff.

With limited resources, a nonprofit can outsource some or all its financial functions, which can help a nonprofit efficiently staff and conduct its financial operations. It also respects the board and executives limited time or expertise to manage the finance functions.

Many nonprofits lack the funds to hire a full-time accountant and usually hire an unqualified and untrained employee ends up performing the accounting role with no backup plan if this employee leaves the organization.

Here are eight overlooked reasons to outsource accounting

1. Improved efficiencies
2. Reduce costs
3. Reduced fraud threats
4. Higher level of expertise
5. Ability to scale
6. Accounting software expertise
7. Manage your finance and accounting function
8. Stay current with regulations and laws

Please click the full article for detailed description of these eight reasons.

Register for FREE Quarterly MIP User Group Meetings for 2023 on August 24, and October 26 at 12:00 EST 

We are looking forward to reconnecting with our MIP clients during 2023 and our pleased to be able to bring back our quarterly MIP User Group Meetings.  As your local certified MIP Trainer and Consultant, we will provide you with helpful tips and tricks, best practices, and software updates.

Summer 2023 on August 24, 2023 from 12:00 to 1:00 EST

• Everything you need to know-best use of MIP for Audit Preparation
• Tips and Tricks for better audits
• Bring your MIP user questions to be answered
• MIP Software Updates including MIP Cloud

Fall 2023 on October 26,2023 from 12:00 to 1:00 EST

• Everything you need to know-best use of MIP and Microix for Budgeting
• Tips and Tricks-Better Budgeting using MIP and Microix
• Bring your MIP user questions to be answered
• MIP Software Updates including MIP Cloud

We are pleased to announce we will be once again presenting and sponsoring the 14th Annual MIP User Conference on October 10-12 in Las Vegas.   Please click on link for conference website and to register.  Please make sure you let us know you are coming and select FTM when you register.

Please click the full article for our MIP Training Schedule including 8 virtual training sessions offered each month. 

Our firm provides all the levels of accounting your nonprofit needs including bookkeeping, accounting, controller, CFO, and software advisory services for nonprofit accounting software including MIP, Microix, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct and AccuFund

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