Creating Efficient Financial Processes

Challenge: An association’s financial standing is the most important aspect of its overall management and a crucial component to its growth. This particular client was uninformed regarding its ongoing financial condition and funding and relied on bank statements which would arrive significantly late, as its sole source of financial status. The Board of Directors and committee members were unaware of the organization’s finances making it difficult to organize events and conferences that required financial resources. In addition, the organization was not in compliance with its bylaws as they were not obtaining an annual audit and report reflecting their overall profits and expenses.

Solution: RRR immediately realized that a major challenge that arose was that the association and their accountant maintained two separate financial books which led to a lack of communication regarding ongoing transactions and inconsistent balances. In collaboration with a new Treasurer, RRR installed online accounting software and online banking access, so the Treasurer and Executive Office could access, run reports and conduct quality control reviews from the same system. The processing of deposits and payments was also streamlined to save time and overnight delivery costs of sending checks between the Treasurer and Executive Office. Finally, the administrative bookkeeping function was assigned to the Executive Office and a CPA was retained to conduct an independent audit and deliver the report at the Annual Meeting.

Result: Financial clarity has been achieved through improved bookkeeping and accounting processes and the association is now in full compliance with its bylaws.