
Be prepared for June year end
At this point in time, your April accounts are about to be finalised and reports produced.
If you have a 30 June year end, it means this is the second last opportunity you have to influence your FY19 accounts. Here are a few simple tasks for May and June to make sure the accounts are in order.
Review Profit & Loss against budget for each activity/cost centre – are income and expenditure in line with budget? If not, why not?
Remember that unspent grant funding has to be returned or is deducted from next year’s funding allocation. If you have underspent to date, what activities do you have planned for May and June that are consistent with your program objectives that can use some of those unspent funds? If you have overspent, make sure you understand why. Is it something you can control and try to recover over the next couple of months? Is it a timing issue that will rectify itself over May and June? Or is it something that was beyond your control, and if so, are there any other ‘levers’ you can pull to try and get expenditure back in line?
On the income side, you have a small window of opportunity to raise further funds if you are below target and now is also the right time to check that you have billed everything you should have regarding fee-for-service activities.

Make sure your shared costs – management, office, utilities, etc – have been allocated across the different parts and activities of the organisation. It costs to run an organisation, operate an office, keep the lights on, communicate with the world.
Each activity your organisation undertakes benefits from that infrastructure and the attention of management and should expect to bear a proportion of the cost.
Review balance sheet accounts to ensure you know what is in each and what you need to do to have the balance sheet nice and tidy for audit. Pay special attention to accounts that haven’t moved during the financial year – has something been missed?
Now is a good time to review accounts that are drawn down each month and to be sure that your monthly transactions are going to bring the account to nil at 30 June – adjust your May and June drawdown amounts to achieve that.
Reconcile, reconcile, reconcile! Don’t leave this until after year-end. A good reconciliation process each month will position you well for year-end… you only have to deal with a month of data rather than work your way through the whole 12 months. Regular reconciliations also improve the accuracy of the accounts presented to management and the Board each month and therefore provide better data to inform business decisions.

Check your audit management letter from last year and ensure you have addressed the points raised… you can be certain that your auditor will check! If they’ve made recommendations regarding controls or processes that you haven’t implemented yet, then it is better late than never. You won’t be able to demonstrate improvement if you leave this until after year end and the auditor won’t take kindly to being ignored, and you can be fairly confident they will let the Board know.
Don’t wait until July to review your June performance… you will have limited opportunities to address any issues at that time… there is no time like the present!
Read more not for profit accounting articles.