A simple year end checklist for nonprofits: reminders, transactions, account reviews, and tax form due dates.

You bought a rental property to make money. But after a year, the numbers look bad. Rent comes in, and it seems to go right back out. You are not alone. Many first time investors lose money on their first rental. The good news is that the reasons are common, and most can be seen in your books. 1. You bought at the wrong time Prices go up and down. If you buy near the top of the market, you may owe more than the property is worth for years. That makes it hard to sell without a

Your extended Form 990 is due Monday, November 16, 2026. Learn which form to file, what late filing costs, and follow a simple 5 week plan to file on time.

Learn how to track restricted vs unrestricted funds in QuickBooks. 5 simple steps to keep grant money right, pass your audit, and keep your donors' trust.

Good books keep your nonprofit safe, keep donors happy, and keep your tax status. This guide gives you the real rules, the real dates, and the dollar amounts. Most bookkeeping blogs skip those parts. Want help right now? We will do your bookkeeping 100% free for your first month. Email markus@revampfinances.com or call 317.983.3980. Why Your Books Matter Bad books cost real money. Here are the numbers. You can lose your tax status. If you miss your yearly IRS form 3 years in

Most of the nonprofits I have worked with over the last three, or four years failed their audit. Almost every single one was missing the same few things. If you want to pass your next audit, here is exactly what auditors look for. Keep Your Paper Trail Auditors want proof. They will ask for things like: Receipts for every purchase Bills and invoices Backup for every journal entry you make Timestamps showing when work was done or approved Board meeting minutes If you cannot sh

A budget helps you plan how much money you expect to earn and spend. It also helps you catch problems early, before they turn into big problems. If you run a nonprofit, a solid budget in QuickBooks Online can show you exactly where you stand each month. Here is how to set one up, step by step. Step 1: Check your fiscal year Before you build a budget, make sure your fiscal year start date is correct. Go to the Gear icon, then Account and Settings. Click Advanced. Look at the F

If you run a business, you have probably felt this before. You look at your bank account and you are not sure if you will be okay in three weeks. That feeling usually means you need a 13 week cash flow forecast. It is one of the most useful tools I use with clients, and you can build one yourself in Excel. Here is how to do it. Step 1: Open Excel and set up your columns Make each column one week. You will have 13 columns total, one for each week you are planning ahead. Step 2

Your accountant should make your life easier. Not harder. Ask them these 3 questions. Their answers will tell you everything you need to know. 1. When was the last time you reconciled my accounts? If they say "quarterly" or "once a year," that is a bad sign. Your accounts should be reconciled every month. If they can't tell you the last date, it is time to find someone new. 2. How fast do you respond when I reach out? If you have to follow up two or three times before you get

This is a true story. A bookkeeper in Oregon wrote 234 checks to herself over time. In total, she took $1.5 million from her company. She was caught and sent to prison for 24 years. But the damage was already done. The company had been in business for over 100 years. It was family owned. After the fraud came out, the business went bankrupt. 85 people lost their jobs. How Did This Happen? The bookkeeper did everything herself. She wrote the checks. She recorded them in the boo

Your books tell the true story of your business. When your books are messy, it is hard to make good choices. Many business owners do not know if their QuickBooks is set up the right way. Why Bookkeeping Health Matters Bad bookkeeping can cost you more than you think. Research shows that a large share of small businesses fail within their first two years, and most of those failures happen because the business runs out of cash. Small mistakes hide inside QuickBooks every day. M

It Takes Time You Don't Have Many nonprofit leaders spend 5 to 10 hours a week on bookkeeping. That is over 500 hours a year. That time could go to your mission. It could go to your donors. It could go to your programs. If your time is worth $50 an hour, that is $25,000 a year spent on spreadsheets instead of your mission. That is money you are not seeing on paper, but you are still paying it. Small Mistakes Can Turn Into Big Problems When you do your own books, small errors

You check your bank account and it looks healthy. Money is coming in. You feel good. But three months later, you are stressed out because there is no cash left and you do not know why. This happens to good, hard working business owners all the time. Not because they are bad at their job. It happens because they never looked deep enough into their own numbers. That is where financial analysis comes in. And today we are going to talk about one simple tool that can help you see

If your books feel messy, you are not alone. In fact, you are probably normal. I have cleaned up more than 500 sets of books for nonprofits and real estate investors. And here is something wild. It is almost always the same five problems. Every single time. When a new client calls me, I already have a good guess of what I am going to find before I even open their books. Let me walk you through it. Problem 1: The bank account does not match The bank statement says one number.

If your nonprofit gets grants or gifts with rules attached, you need a clear way to track that money. Mixing restricted funds with your general funds is one of the most common mistakes nonprofits make. It can lead to real trouble with your board, your auditor, and your donors. The good news is QuickBooks Online can handle this well once it is set up the right way. Here is a full step by step guide. Why Restricted Fund Tracking Matters Restricted funds come with rules from the

Board members are leaving nonprofits right now over bad audits. Funders are walking away. Grants are being denied. All because of one thing. Restricted funds. And the scary part? Most nonprofit leaders do not even know their restricted fund tracking is broken until the auditor tells them. By then it is too late. 48% of nonprofit fraud cases are linked to weak internal controls. And mismanaged restricted funds are the number one audit finding auditors see year after year. (Sou

Most nonprofits are leaving grant money on the table because they can not track it right. Here is the good news. QuickBooks Online can help you fix that. And you do not need a big accounting team to do it.

You started your nonprofit to make a difference. Not to figure out what your numbers mean. But at some point, you looked at your financial reports and thought, "I have no idea if we are in good shape or not." That is a sign you may have outgrown your bookkeeper. And it may be time to talk about a controller. A bookkeeper records what happened. A controller tells you what it means and what to do next. So what does a bookkeeper actually do? A bookkeeper keeps your records clean

If your nonprofit gets money from grants, you need to know where every dollar goes. Funders want proof. Your board wants answers. And your auditor? They want a paper trail. The good news is that QuickBooks Online has a tool built right in that makes grant tracking for nonprofits simple. It is called the Projects feature. In this post, I will walk you through how to set it up and use it step by step. No fancy software. No extra cost. Just QuickBooks Online doing what it was ma

You bought the rental property. Now the question is: who is actually going to run it? A lot of Indianapolis investors default to managing it themselves because it feels like the cheaper option. And sometimes it is. But sometimes it quietly costs you more than you think. Let's break down the real numbers so you can make the right call for your situation. What a Property Manager Actually Costs in Indianapolis Most property management companies in Indianapolis charge somewhere b