Bookkeeping for nonprofits

Call (417) 323-2629 or have me call you.

I’m Diane Jones. I’ve kept books for more than 30 years, 15 of them as the accounting manager for one company, and I’m a QuickBooks Online Certified ProAdvisor at the Gold tier. I work from Ash Grove, Missouri, over Zoom and phone, with nonprofits anywhere in the U.S., and in person around Springfield when that helps. Most nonprofit files I see were kept by a volunteer treasurer doing their best with a business chart of accounts. The numbers are usually close to right. What’s missing is a way for the board to see restricted money apart from general money. I put that in and keep it working every month.

Restricted gifts and grants, kept honest

A donor gives for the food pantry, and that money belongs to the food pantry until it’s spent there. A funder awards a grant for a youth program, and at the end they want a list of what the award paid for. Both are easy to lose track of when everything runs through one checking account.

I put restricted gifts and grants in their own classes the day they arrive and reconcile those balances every month, so what you still hold for a purpose matches what the bank says you have. Then a funder report is just a filtered report out of QuickBooks. The board can see how much of the bank balance is free to use.

What your board or treasurer receives

• Statement of Activities, by program and fund, for the month and the year to date
• Statement of Financial Position, with restricted net assets shown apart from unrestricted
• Cash Flow, so the board knows what’s actually in the bank and what’s spoken for
• Budget versus actual, by program, when you have an approved budget
• Grant summaries on request, showing what was spent against each award

The reports are set up so a board member who’s never read a financial statement can follow them.

Who this fits

Small nonprofits, associations, ministries, and community organizations. A paid director or a working board, a few programs, some grants, and a treasurer who’d rather read a report than build one. If the books are behind, sometimes by years, that’s the work I want most. A cleanup or catch-up project gets you current, with a fixed quote in writing before I start.

Monthly bookkeeping is a flat monthly fee, quoted in writing after a free review of your file. There’s a written engagement letter before any work starts, and either side can end it with 30 days’ written notice. The pricing page explains how I build the quote. The free call is where we start.