When individuals in your neighborhood are hungry, you search for any alternative to be extra environment friendly so you may spend extra time getting meals to those that want it. However with out the proper methods in place, administrative duties like pulling grant reporting might be time-intensive and error-prone, taking away from time you could possibly be utilizing to concentrate on extra strategic initiatives.
Your meals financial institution wants accounting software program that may allow you to handle a wide range of funding sources whereas additionally serving to you make strategic, data-driven selections based mostly on stock and forecasted neighborhood demand. Listed below are 5 methods software program designed for nonprofit organizations might help your meals financial institution save time and enhance transparency—so you will get again to feeding your neighborhood.
1. Present clear stewardship for restricted funds.
From fundraising initiatives to grant awards, your meals financial institution probably juggles a mixture of restricted and unrestricted {dollars}. With a fund accounting system, you may simply observe that restriction again to the donor or grant that trusted your group with these funds. With allotted initiatives particular to these restrictions, you may simply present your donors and grant funders that their cash aligned with their particular intent.
Enhance transparency by speaking the standing of your restricted fund stability to the stakeholders inside your group. Create a model of your stability sheet that features a column for restricted funds so your management can see at a look what belongings are tied to a program or particular use case. Having this up-to-date stability might help your group make higher data-driven selections.
2. Scale back threat with a single supply of fact for all of your grant funding.
Monitoring one grant award exterior of your accounting software program shouldn’t be ideally suited, however manageable. However if you’re like most meals banks, it’s not only one grant. It’s a number of. Or dozens. Every further spreadsheet shouldn’t be solely one other headache, but in addition a chance for outdated or inaccurate knowledge to get into your system.
Use your fund accounting system to trace the small print of every grant, together with standing, quantity awarded, and kind of grant. Add the grant pointers and funds worksheets so they’re at your fingertips any time you could have a query. Having one place for all of your grant-specific data breaks down silos and avoids introducing threat by way of pulling knowledge out of assorted methods into spreadsheets.
3. Price range and forecast throughout all applications.
Meals banks should be nimble. You may get some superior discover a couple of main native employer closing, however local weather occasions and pandemics not often offer you various days warning. However operating—and re-running—funds situations and forecasts all year long can hold you from feeling flat-footed throughout a disaster to your neighborhood.
With a fund accounting system, you may funds on the program degree to see all funding sources that assist every program, together with grants that cross fiscal years. You can too construct a rolling forecast for all bills, grants, and applications. This lets you verify in your pacing to see if you’re over- or under-spending particular grants.
Correct forecasting and budgeting are additionally vital to your stock necessities. With multi-scenario budgeting, you may see what it could seem like when you had a 20% or 50% enhance in demand, after which plan for these situations. You possibly can set up benchmarks for when extra fundraising appeals have to exit and modify your objectives based mostly on the place you might be in comparison with these situations.
4. Format your Chart Organizer as soon as for particular reporting necessities.
Versatile reporting permits you to meet your compliance and transparency necessities with out having to recreate studies every time you want them.
For instance, if you’ll want to file Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA) Stories, you may create a report that exhibits these expenditures by grant. You possibly can simply group all of the accounts that fall beneath the emergency meals help applications and classify the columns so you may clearly present what funds have been from direct awards and what was from pass-through awards
Even exterior of grant reporting necessities, you need to use versatile reporting capabilities to maintain your management updated on key initiatives. Use your fund accounting system to run studies by particular applications or grants to offer extra transparency to your board and funding organizations.
Your inner stakeholders aren’t the one ones who will admire these studies. With view-only entry, your auditors may also drill down into the specifics of every report, getting the data they want with out taking your workers’s time.
5. Combine your stock administration to keep away from duplicate entry.
Fashionable APIs imply you don’t have to compromise. As a substitute of getting a single system that does one side properly however falls quick for the remainder of your group, every division can choose the software program that works greatest for his or her particular wants. By integrating your warehouse administration software program together with your fund accounting system, you get data in your system shortly and precisely so you may make extra knowledgeable selections.
These interfaces routinely pull buy orders, receipts, and invoices straight into your accounting system for fee and monitoring. You can too push up to date valuations and stock fluctuations into the final ledger with out having to enter the information in each locations. This protects your workers time and reduces the possibilities of mis-keyed data.
See Fund Accounting in Motion
In case your meals financial institution is prepared for an accounting system designed to your wants, try our webinar, Combine and Innovate: Why Meals Banks Want Fund Accounting Software program. You’ll see how Blackbaud Monetary Edge NXT can simplify your reporting and enhance transparency, serving to you propose higher and earn extra funding.