It's easy to get busy with your mission and forget a thing or two each month
Our accounting focus this month is to successfully close out the financial records for the first month of this calendar year.
A critical tool to remain consistent with your processes and to provide accurate accounting reports is your handy dandy Month-End Checklist. Many small organizations may keep a mental note of all the tasks that must be done to close out the previous month, however, it’s not uncommon for busy nonprofits to overlook a few important aspects of closing the month such as entering bills due, reviewing outstanding pledges, tracking in-kind contributions, reconciling bank accounts and more. The more often these accounting tasks are overlooked, it will lead to less reliable financial reporting which may result in a lot of explanation in future months while you’re playing catch up to record all of the overdue financial transactions.
Another consideration as you close out your first month of accounting for the year is to remember to include all donor/sponsor pledges in your accounting records. This is not only helpful for the accrual based accounting reports, but these invoices will continue to be tracked as accounts receivable records until they’re paid. Don’t let potential donations fall through the cracks because of poor recordkeeping!
Do you need a month-end checklist or is it time to revise the checklist you currently use?
If so, the example below from Aplos may give you a jumpstart in this process: https://www.aplos.com/academy/nonprofit/nonprofit-accounting/lessons/month-end-closing-checklist/
