How-To Guides

What nonprofit indirect cost rates are, how the 10% de minimis rate works, when to negotiate a NICRA, how foundations cap indirect recovery, and how to calculate your organization's actual indirect cost rate.

A step-by-step guide to nonprofit net asset releases — what triggers a release, the journal entry, how it flows through the Statement of Activities, common timing errors, and what documentation you need.

Nonprofit audits come in two forms: financial statement audits and federal Single Audits under Uniform Guidance. This guide covers what triggers each, what auditors request, how to organize an evidence binder, and how far in advance to prepare.

An introduction to restricted fund accounting for nonprofits — the with-donor-restriction and without-donor-restriction net asset classes under ASU 2016-14, how to record restricted contributions, when to release restrictions, and common bookkeeping mistakes.

Restricted fund tracking is one of the most audit-prone areas in nonprofit finance. This guide covers FASB ASC 958 categories, what releasing a restriction means in practice, where tracking breaks down, and what a compliant system looks like.

Everything nonprofits need to know about the SF-425 Federal Financial Report: when it's required, what each field means, how to pull the data, and the most common errors that trigger agency follow-up.

What the $750,000 single audit threshold means for nonprofits, how to calculate your Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA), what happens when you cross the threshold, and how major program determination works.

How nonprofits track donor-restricted contributions from receipt through spending and year-end reconciliation — recording the gift, tagging to program codes, monitoring expenditures against restrictions, and handling unspent restricted funds at fiscal year-end.

2 CFR Part 200 governs how nonprofits must manage federal grants — cost principles, indirect cost rates, subrecipient monitoring, and audit requirements. This guide explains what it requires in operational terms and where organizations most often fall out of compliance.

A complete list of what nonprofit auditors typically request during fieldwork — organized by audit area — plus what 'audit-ready' actually means in practice and how long a typical nonprofit audit takes.