Nonprofit finance, accounting, and tax news. Other tidbits of interest to the charity community.
Software from an outfit called Carrier IQ seems to be available for all the smartphones, if it is not already loaded on all of them. Their software can track everything you do, down to monitoring key strokes and web sites visited.
So what? Think passwords to bank accounts, apps used, all data searches performed and what results were viewed.
Remember the discussion on your phone tracking your location every moment? This goes beyond location tracking.
A Quick Guide to QuickBooks from the December Journal of Accountancy provides 15 great tips for more efficient and effective use of QuickBooks. Check it out for ideas you haven’t seen before.
A few highlights of interest to small NPOs:
Memorized transactions – you can memorize recurring transactions, such as the rent or copier payment and have them posted automatically on a chosen day.
Five great articles in the Wall Street Journal on November 28. If you have yesterdays paper sitting around, grab The Journal Report section and save it.
I will discuss these articles in more detail later, along with my thoughts on the operate-as-a-business question. In the meantime here are some links. Check them out – they are not behind a paywall! (more…)
Looking for a 400 word summary of how to account for permanent endowments?
Colette Kamps, CPA, has a great overview in her post Underwater with UPMIFA, at the Nonprofit GPS blog.
Highlight of the summary: (more…)
My tale on internal control done well and poor at two churches is now available in Kindle format at Amazon.
Price is $0.99.
You can read the book on your Kindle device, on any smart phone with a Kindle app, or on your computer using the Kindle-for-PC application.
At Amazon, search for my name, Ulvog, or the book title, Once Upon Internal Control.
Or click here to go directly to the book.
Sharlynn Garza has two great tips for QuickBooks users in her post Quickbooks Tips at the Nonprofit/Government GPS blog..
One of the things that can create a mess in QuickBooks is to make a change in prior year data that has already been closed out or even audited.
One of the underappreciated dangers of changing prior year data is a loss of credibility for the finance staff. When a new report has prior numbers that don’t equal what was on previously distributed reports, the finance team looks bad. The board can lose confidence in your abilities if the previous numbers change and the report users think prior data is fluid.
Ms. Garza points out two things you can do to avoid changing previous amounts.
There are dangers if the Chinese economy does not continue to grow at 9%. By the way, economies just don’t go straight up forever. That means the road ahead could be bumpy.
If what happens in China is of interest to your ministry, might be worth checking out my post, Continue to pay attention to China at my other blog, Outrun Change.
Barna Group has released new research about young people who drop out of church. Their book is called, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith.
They have posted an executive summary of the research on their blog: Five Myths about Young Adult Church Dropouts.
The myths: (more…)
A: Doing more with less. In other words, increased productivity.
On one hand, the unemployment rate continues very high, which means there are lots fewer people working. On the other hand, GDP has just passed the peak from before the recession, which means the size or value of the economy has recovered.
Check out this picture – (more…)
Richard Hammar calls attention to new regulations of the Consumer Product Safety Commission affecting cribs in the September/October 2011 edition of Church Law & Tax Report. The newsletter is not available online so I will not quote it. Since government statistics & regulations aren’t copyrightable, I will summarize a few key pieces of information from the CPSC.
By the way if you are in leadership of a church, I heartily recommend you subscribe to Church Law & Tax Report. At $69 for six issues a year, it is the most reasonable, pertinent legal information you’ll find. E-mail contact: CLTReditor@christianitytoday.com. On the net at www.ChurchLawandTaxReport.com.
Why are cribs a problem getting government attention? Here’s the data CPSC collected in a 2 ½ year time span: (more…)
The accounting rule maker has added two issues to their agenda. One is a research project and the other one, which could result in new accounting rules, addresses reporting issues.
Until more details are posted at the FASB web site, this paragraph will give you the general direction:
The swinging of a pendulum is a great word picture for describing change. Especially helps for explaining shifts in computing power. The pendulum swung from dumb terminals to personal computers and now to ‘the cloud’.
I mention this in a post at my other blog, Outrun Change: The computing pendulum has swung back to dumb terminals and service bureaus – will it swing back?
There I discuss and link to a post by John Bredehoft.
By the way, my ponderings about the change taking place around us are posted on the other blog. That leaves this blog focused on nonprofit issues.
Delivering books in PDF format is old news.
Today I looked at the process anew and laughed in marvel at the simplicity, low-cost, and blinding speed of doing so. Posted my thoughts on my other blog Outrun Change at: It’s a blast being alive today, or, isn’t technology cool?
Faith-Based Accounting has a great intro to federal tax reporting requirements for NPOs at Ya Mean I Gotta Deal With the I.R.S.?
Do you have: (more…)
GDP numbers announced last week show 3rd quarter growth at 2.5% rate. Wow.
That is not exactly the kind of growth you would expect if the economy were starting to falter in advance of slipping into a double dip recession. Maybe we are not going to slip into a double dip. I discussed this idea earlier.