Fund Accounting 101: What is Fund Accounting?

If income is higher than expenses, it’s called an excess; if the situation is the opposite, it’s called a deficit. The fund accounting balance sheet at non-profits is the same as in for-profit organizations, showing the value of assets and liabilities. This organization and allocation also acts as the basis for various statements that help nonprofits make financial decisions.

By using fund accounting, the church board can dissect, for each mission area, how well the resources are used. Each mission area would have their own set of financial reports. This is one of the primary objectives that fund accounting helps.

CPE Webinar: Mastering Budgeting: Build Budget Reporting for…

Luckily, there is accounting software made specifically for nonprofit organizations, and it can make handling these things much easier. Not all nonprofits need to report to the IRS, but the ones that do need to report where the money came from, how it was spent, and why it was spent. QuickBooks makes https://www.bookstime.com/articles/accounting-automation it easy to tag expenditures to fundraising, programs, or general admin so that you can report exactly how each dollar was spent for each program or fund across your organization. At the end of the year, all of your data is organized in one location to save you time when preparing IRS Form 990.

The video is an eye-opener for those of us who hander money for nonprofits. You can split the transaction in Aplos between fund accounting however many accounts/funds/tags you need. When entering the transaction, there should be a “+” icon to add another line.

Donation Funds VS Accounting Funds

If you haven’t done so, sign up for our free Nonprofit Accounting 5-Day Email Course. We’ll go over everything you need to excel at several aspects of accounting. If you can think of answers to the above question, write them down.

Accurate records enable organizations to generate insightful financial reports, which help make more  informed decisions and demonstrate fiscal responsibility. In order to be accurate, transparent, and accountable, it’s worth adopting these fund accounting best practices. Mary Girsch-Bock is the expert on accounting software and payroll software for The Ascent. A challenge for even experienced accountants, fund accounting can prove to be particularly challenging to those with little experience in the accounting field. In the next lesson, we will look at money that goes into and out of your organization, and how to set up your chart of accounts. The reason for this is so the stewardship committees can compare funds from one year to previous years.