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 you run a nonprofit, you know that not all money is the same. Some money you can spend on anything your nonprofit needs. This is called unrestricted funds. Some money can only be used for a certain purpose. Maybe a donor said use this for the new roof or use this for the youth program. This is called restricted funds. Mixing these two up is one of the biggest mistakes nonprofits make. It can lead to a bad audit. It can also break trust with your donors and board. The good

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

Does This Sound Like You? You worked hard to get that grant. You wrote the proposal. You answered all the questions. You waited and waited. And then you got the good news. The money came in. But now what? Where did that money go? Did you spend it the right way? Can you prove it? When is the report due? What happens if you miss it? If those questions make your stomach hurt, you are not alone. So many nonprofit leaders feel this same stress every single day. And the truth is, i

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

Here is something that happens to a lot of people running a small business or side hustle. They are making money. Things look fine. And then out of nowhere an unexpected bill shows up and suddenly there is nothing left in the account. This is not usually a profit problem. It is a timing problem. Money did not come in at the right time to cover money going out. And the frustrating thing is that it is almost always avoidable if you can see it coming. That is exactly what a cash

If someone walks up to you at a fundraising event and says, "I'll give your organization $10,000 next year," that sounds like great news. And it is! But before you record that promise in your books, you need to ask one important question: is there a catch? That question is at the heart of the difference between conditional and unconditional pledges, and getting it right matters a lot for your nonprofit's financial statements. So What Is a Pledge, Anyway? A pledge (sometimes c

Most real estate investors think they have a handle on their finances. They check their bank balance, track their deals, and assume everything is under control. Then one day, they cannot make payroll. Or they miss a crucial property payment. Or they have to turn down a perfect investment opportunity because they do not have the cash ready. The problem is not that they are bad at real estate. The problem is they are flying blind financially. They need a 13 week rolling cash fl

Most real estate investors don’t intentionally mess up their finances. It usually starts small. One rental property. One bank account. One credit card. You tell yourself you’ll clean it up later. Later almost always gets expensive. Mixing personal and rental finances feels harmless, but it quietly drains cash, creates tax problems, and makes smart investing decisions harder than they need to be. The real cost isn’t just messy books. It’s missed opportunities, higher stress, a