NFP Partners

Outsourcing Webinar

nfppartners — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:12:57 +0000

Outsourced accounting and CFO services, as in the private sector, are gaining some ground among nonprofits. For smaller organizations that are constrained financially, hiring and maintaining a competent bookkeeper much less a professional accountant is often not feasible. Outsourcing is a very viable alternative. The chief executive and Board have the assurance and peace of mind that the accounting work is being done right; internal controls are in place; financial reports are relevant, accurate and timely; and the total cost is less than trying to do everything in-house. We have made a commitment to offer outsourced accounting and CFO services through a flexible, collaborative arrangement we have named ‘Outsourcing Meets In-house Accounting’. Over the next months we will present a webinar that describes what the service is all about. You can download and print an overview description and table of our outsourcing services. Contact us if you have immediate interest and do not want to wait for webinar.

The outsourcing webinar is scheduled throughout the year as listed below. Sessions are on Wednesday at 2:00 PM mountain time and last one hour. Click on the date below to view the course description and to register.

The schedule dates are:

January 20

March 17

May 19

July 21

September 15

November 17

Financial Management Training Survey Coming Soon

nfppartners — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:58:23 +0000

As announced in the last Success Ledger, NFP Partners and JVA Consulting are collaborating in developing a financial management training curriculum for nonprofit executives and Board members. The first essential step is to get a firm understanding of training needs. We have developed a short web-based survey form. All organizations and contacts on our newsletter subscriber lists will receive an e-mail asking for a response sometime in late January or early February. We ask your cooperation and input.

JAG Products / NFP Partners Joint Webinar for Nonprofit Mental Health Clinics

nfppartners — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:44:01 +0000

JAG Products, a national developer of clinical and billing software for nonprofit mental health and substance abuse treatment providers is joining with NFP Partners to present a webinar on February 18. JAG Products has been meeting the needs of mental health clinics since 1998. Its flagship product, ClinicTracker, is an agency-wide solution that has won high praise for its intuitive interface, time-saving array of functions, and responsive support. All of JAG’s solutions promote accountability, efficiency, and improved patient care. JAG and Sage have collaborated to integrate the billing component of ClinicTracker with Sage MIP Fund Accounting. The webinar is entitled ‘Clinic Management in Tough Times: Strategies for Improving Productivity, Accountability, and Quality of Care’. The principal presenter is Michael Gordon, Ph.D. Professor of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University. We will be mailing invitations to mental health providers in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska and New Mexico the week of January 11. If applicable, mark your calendars and call (303-367-1058) or e-mail (Lee@NFPpartners.com) me if you do not receive the invitation. To register click here.

QuickBooks Webinar Series

nfppartners — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:43:53 +0000

The most popular webinar we presented over the past year was ‘Getting the Most Out of QuickBooks’. The feedback received was mostly positive; however, some offered that the content was too basic, while other indicated it was too advanced, reflecting where they were organizationally. This year we want to offer a three-webinar series that addresses the interests of most organizations at various development stages from startups to more mature organizations that may be outgrowing QuickBooks. As a QuickBooks ProAdvisor we can provide QuickBooks consulting with specialized knowledge about the software’s use in a not-for-profit environment. Currently, we are testing the Statement Writer, a relatively new QuickBooks add-on from Intuit. The Statement Writer offers more range and flexibility in developing customized financial reports. Our test objective is to generate FASB 117-compliant Statements of Activities and Financial Position, a vexing issue for QuickBooks.

Here is the schedule for the year with links to course descriptions and to register. All sessions are for one hour and are on Wednesdays at 2:00 PM mountain time.

Getting Started with QuickBooks

January 27

April 28

July 28

October 27
Getting the Most Out of QuickBooks

February 10

May 12

August 11

November 10
Knowing When to Leave QuickBooks

February 24

May 26

August 25

November 17

IRS Mileage Rates for 2010

nfppartners — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:07:08 +0000

Beginning on Jan. 1, 2010, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be:

50 cents per mile for business miles driven
16.5 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes
14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations

To read the complete IRS announcement click here.

What a Nonprofit Needs to Know About D & O Insurance Coverage

nfppartners — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:57:26 +0000

Don Griesmann has written a very informative article about directors and officers (D & O) liability insurance. All nonprofit organizations carry this insurance – or should. Many may assume adequacy of coverage, but really don’t know the details. Don references new information from the International Risk Management Institute about areas of coverage that may be problematic (e.g., employment practices liability). Additionally, the article includes resource and definition sections, which provide an excellent reference source for conducting an internal review your nonprofit’s liability coverage.

Fade the ‘Overhead’ Measure as a Way to Pick a Charity

nfppartners — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:54:01 +0000

The conventional wisdom is that the ratio of overhead expenditures to program or total expenditures is a meaningful measure in evaluating a nonprofit for ‘giving worthiness’. As an accountant I’ve always been a skeptic of its importance, as it can be a very ‘swishy’ number, subject to manipulation and wide variance from one type of organization to another. Apparently, some of the arbiters in the nonprofit sector agree. Kate Barr of the Nonprofits Assistance Fund posted an article that summarizes why overhead is fading as a measure and contains links to a paper published by Guidestar and comments by the CEO of Charity Navigator.

Best Practice: Federal Grant Compliance Program

nfppartners — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:24:04 +0000

Do you want to know more about how to manage federal grants? Here is an excellent article by Paul Calabrese, CPA, published on a site sponsored by the Greater Washington State Society of CPAs Educational Foundation. The site, named Nonprofit Accounting Basics, also contains some other excellent material on establishing good nonprofit financial management.

Sage MIP Fund Accounting Wins Fourth Consecutive Campbell Award

nfppartners — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:04:37 +0000

Sage MIP Fund Accounting has received the Campbell Award for being the most recommended accounting product among users from nonprofits in the US! Sage MIP continues to gather accolades. As a Sage Partner that recommends MIP as the primary software solution to nonprofit organizations that required a more robust accounting and reporting capability, we are always pleased to receive independent assurances. Click here to read the full press release.

Looking Forward to 2010

nfppartners — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:37:40 +0000

By Lee Bengston

Happy New Years everyone! The year 2009 is history and 2010 beacons. Like many of our nonprofit friends, we have gone through a lean year, but are encouraged that the New Year will prove better. Looking back, there is reason for encouragement. In spite of most nonprofits freezing budgets for capital expenditures, including funfing for IT and financial software, we were able to acquire eight new clients using Sage MIP Fund Accounting software. Our goals for 2010 are somewhat more robust. We would like to get one new client a month, an increase of 50%. We are optimistic that nonprofit financial strength will improve, particularly in some sectors such as health care that others that are direct or indirect beneficiaries of federal funding.

But software is only one tool in our arsenal to help nonprofits become better financial managers. We want to help smaller nonprofit organizations as well, so expect to hear more about our collaborative outsourced accounting and CFO services, Outsourcing Meets In-house Accounting, which is software independent and often entails improved utilization of QuickBooks or other entry-level accounting systems.

Our plans call for delivering more financial management training to nonprofit executives and managers. See our announcement about the QuickBooks webinar series, the outsourcing webinar, and also the initiative to define general financial literacy training needs in partnership with JVA Associates. Further, we want to improve our capability to deliver relevant and timely information about what’s going on in nonprofit financial management and access to helpful resources. Our ‘to be revised’ web/blog site, newsletter, Facebook fan page and Twitter are part of this effort, which will succeed or fail depending on the value of content we are able to provide. I hope some of the recently posted articles are representative of the type of information and resource links that I’m talking about. I spend several hours weekly culling through information from various sources that comes my way and selecting the best to pass along to our subscribers. Getting some feedback would be very helpful and provide some assurance that we are on the right track.

Anticipating business growth, we are adding consultants to our virtual group. More recently we have acquired the services of Laura Jorstad, an experienced financial professional with a great job history in the public health field, working both within state government and the nonprofit community. Laura will be primarily responsible for getting our outsourced accounting and CFO services off the ground. We also have secured the services of Robert (Bob) Blake, formerly head of Sage Non Profit Solutions’ professional services and training. Bob knows the MIP software inside and out and has implemented it literally hundreds of times all over the world. Bob is available to us both as a background resource and to manage larger MIP implementation projects.

Well that’s our story in condensed form for 2010. I hope yours in equally hopeful and that we will have the opportunity to be of service.