Understanding Nonprofit Treasurer Reports: 4 Things to Know

Your nonprofit’s board of directors provides oversight for various areas of your organization’s activities, from making decisions about your long-term goals to ensuring ethical fundraising practices. Financial governance also falls under the board’s duties, and the member who typically takes charge of this is your treasurer.

One of the most important responsibilities of a nonprofit treasurer is to create recurring reports that provide an overview of your organization’s financial situation. These reports help your organization track its financial performance and can be a key resource for developing and adjusting your fiscal strategy.

In this quick guide, you’ll learn the basics of what a nonprofit treasurer report entails, including:

1. Elements of a Nonprofit Treasurer Report
2. Treasurer Reporting Schedules
3. Resources for Compiling Treasurer Reports
4. Treasurer Report Applications

Let’s get started by looking at the main features of nonprofit treasurer reports to make the documents easier for your team to navigate.

1. Elements of a Nonprofit Treasurer Report

Most treasurer reports begin with the same basic reference elements: the organization’s name and the time period the report covers. The treasurer’s signature should also appear at the top or bottom of the report to confirm that it’s legitimate and finalized.

As explained in Jitasa’s guide to nonprofit treasurer reports, the body of the document should include:

• Your organization’s cash balance at the beginning of the reporting period. This number should only represent the cash your nonprofit currently has on hand. It excludes any predicted or pledged funding that will come in later, as well as fixed asset values.
• All of the revenue your nonprofit brought in during the reporting period. Your treasurer will categorize this section based on your organization’s funding sources, such as individual donations, corporate giving, investment returns, and grants.
• All of the expenses your nonprofit incurred during the reporting period. Your treasurer could organize this section in a few different ways. However, using the functional expense categories of program, administrative, and fundraising costs keeps treasurer reports consistent with your nonprofit’s other financial documents, like budgets and tax returns.
• Your organization’s cash balance at the end of the reporting period. To calculate this, your treasurer will simply add your nonprofit’s total revenue for the reporting period to its initial cash balance and then subtract its total expenses.

The end of each treasurer report may include additional financial information at your treasurer’s discretion. This “notes and highlights” section could consist of revenue and expense projections for the next reporting period, budget vs. actual comparisons, updates on asset valuation, or any other data that your treasurer thinks would be helpful to illustrate your nonprofit’s financial successes and opportunities for improvement.

2. Treasurer Reporting Schedules

The most important thing about your organization’s treasurer reports is that they’re compiled on a regular basis to promote consistent financial governance. However, there are two primary schedules your nonprofit could use, each with their own benefits:

• Monthly treasurer reports track your organization’s financial progress as compared to its budget so your team can make short-term decisions about spending and fundraising. Since they cover a relatively short timespan, they can be very comprehensive without becoming too wordy. These reports are usually used for internal purposes like outlining the financial updates at monthly board meetings or guiding finance committee activities.
• Annual treasurer reports are broader in scope and typically summarize your organization’s financial highlights and performance for the year. They inform internal and external purposes that range from grantseeking to budgeting to annual report development.

Many organizations find it effective to use a combination of the two schedules so they can experience the benefits of both. If you take this approach, your treasurer will create smaller reports for 11 months of the year. Then, in the last month of your organization’s fiscal year, they’ll develop a larger-scale, year-in-review report so your team has that information on hand as you start a new fiscal year.

3. Resources for Compiling Treasurer Reports

To develop thorough, accurate reports, your treasurer will likely reference many of your nonprofit’s key financial documents and information logs. These may include:

• Transaction records for all expenditures and funds received during a reporting period, which are stored in your accounting system. 
• Bank account statements to confirm that your organization’s transaction records are accurate and up to date.
• Financial statements like your income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, and functional expense report, which inform their analysis.
• Your annual operating budget so they can compare your actual year-to-date numbers to your projections from the beginning of the fiscal year.

Your treasurer may also collaborate with your nonprofit’s financial professionals as they create their reports. For instance, they might ask your accountant to review recent bank reconciliations with them, discuss cash flow forecasts for the upcoming reporting period with your CFO, or have your bookkeeper pull relevant transaction records from your accounting system if your organization’s technology policies don’t allow them to have full database access.

4. Treasurer Report Applications

As mentioned previously, both monthly and annual treasurer reports influence your nonprofit’s operations in multiple ways. Therefore, it’s likely that many individuals will interact with the reports, such as your organization’s:

• Other board members. In addition to the treasurer’s updates at monthly meetings, treasurer reports are useful during board orientation to get new members up to speed on your nonprofit’s financial situation.
• Leadership. As your organization’s leaders and board work together on big-picture activities like strategic planning and risk management, they may reference recent treasurer reports to inform the financial aspects of those processes.
• External stakeholders. Prospective major donors and grantmakers often want insight into your nonprofit’s finances before committing a large amount of funding to your mission. Treasurer reports can be a good indicator of progress and summary of your organization’s financial highlights to help with their decision-making.

Nonprofit treasurers typically serve as financial liaisons between an organization’s board and staff or between a nonprofit and its community. Since their reports have many applications, they’re essential for your treasurer to accomplish this purpose.

Nonprofit treasurer reports are important financial tools for your entire organization. Work with your treasurer to establish a reporting schedule that works for your team, and ensure they have access to the resources they need to compile their reports. Then, once they’ve created a few reports, assess their helpfulness and determine whether the treasurer should include additional sections to improve them or if there are other useful applications for the reports you can tap into to boost your nonprofit’s financial success.