Preparing for your fiscal year-end can seem daunting, but with Aplos, you have the tools to make the process smooth and accurate. This guide will walk you through essential tips and tricks for reconciling your accounts, managing donations and donor records, closing your period, and setting up your new budget.

Reconciling Your Accounts

Bank Reconciliation is one of the most critical steps a church or nonprofit can take. It involves comparing your transactions recorded in Aplos with your actual bank statements. This ensures that all your income and expenses are accurately entered into your registers or asset accounts, giving you a true picture of your financial standing.

Reviewing Past Bank Reconciliation Reports

Aplos generates a bank reconciliation report every time you complete a reconciliation. You can access past reports from the Bank reconciliation screen or from the reports screen:

• Bank Reconciliation:
  • Navigate to Fund Accounting > Transactions > Bank Reconciliation
  • Click on the "Reconciled" tab at the top
  • Select the register you want to view you report for
  • Click "View" for the bank reocncilation period you would like to see a report for

• Reports: 
  • Navigate to the reports tab
  • Scroll down to the "Other" category and select "Bank Reconciliation"
    
  • In the report filters dropdown select the register account and statement period
    

Focusing on Uncleared Transactions

When reviewing your bank reconciliation reports, pay close attention to the Unclear Transactions section as of your fiscal year-end date.

• What are Unclear Transactions? These are transactions that were entered into Aplos but were not selected or "cleared" during a specific bank reconciliation.
• Common Reasons for Unclear Transactions:
  • Duplicate transactions: This is the most frequent reason.
  • Incorrect information: The transaction might have the wrong date or amount.
  • Uncashed checks: A check was issued but never cashed by the payee.

Why is this important? Every transaction in Aplos affects your Balance Sheet. If you have many unaddressed uncleared transactions at year-end, your bank balance on your Balance Sheet will be inaccurate.

Action Steps:

1. Compare your Balance Sheet as of your fiscal year-end date with your actual bank statement balance for the same period.
2. If they don't match, thoroughly review your uncleared transactions and research any discrepancies (e.g., duplicate deposits, uncashed checks). Address these by correcting information or marking them as "Do not post to accounting" if they were already recorded elsewhere.

Managing Donations and Donor Records

Ensuring your donation and donor data is clean and accurate is vital, especially when preparing year-end statements.

Undeposited Contributions

An undeposited contribution is a donation that has been recorded on the contribution side but hasn't yet been posted to the accounting register (i.e., it hasn't "hit" your bank account in Aplos).

To find and manage undeposited contributions:

1. Go to Donations > Contributions > Contributions.
2. In the search criteria select "undeposited" for the deposited dropdown.
   
3. Go to donation > Contributions > Deposits
4. In the search criteria select "Unlinked" for the Accounting Status dropdown
   

Action Steps:

• Make sure everything is current. If a contribution is undeposited, investigate why.
• If the accounting transaction for a contribution has already been recorded elsewhere (e.g., directly in the register), but the contribution itself is still showing as undeposited, you can check the "Do not post to accounting" box. This will mark the contribution as deposited without creating a duplicate transaction in your accounting register.

Donations by Contact Report (Donation Statements)

The Donations by Contact Report is essentially your donation statement report, often generated at the end of the year.

Action Steps for Review:

1. Generate the Donations by Contact Report.
2. Review thoroughly:
   • Check for donor names: Ensure they are correctly recorded.
   • Verify donation amounts: If a significant donation is missing or an unusually large amount is showing, research it immediately.
3. Seeing all Donations: There are two ways to view the donations details for each donation tied to a donor
   1. You can click on a donation amount within the report to view the breakdown, including dates, funds, accounts, and individual donation amounts for one specific donor.
   2. In the report layout, you can select the details box to see the individual donations for each donor on the report 
      

Cleaning Up Donor Contacts

At fiscal year-end, it's a good practice to perform some housekeeping on your donor contact list. We recommend using our duplicate contact feature to quickly identify duplicates and merge them. To learn more about merging contacts check out our resource on Merging Contacts

Why Merge? If a donor has two separate contact records, generating donation statements will result in two different statements for that donor. Merging them ensures a single, consolidated statement is produced. This also prevents statements from being sent to outdated addresses or emails if duplicate records contain old information.

Utilizing Period Close

The Period Close feature is a powerful tool to lock down transactions for a specific timeframe, preventing accidental changes or new entries.

Benefits of Period Close

• Locks Transactions: Once a period is closed, transactions within that period cannot be edited or new transactions cannot be entered.
• Prevents Mistakes: This helps prevent accidental entries or edits in a prior fiscal year, which could impact past reports. Any update to a past transaction will affect all future reports from that date forward.

To learn more about the Period Close feature check out this article.

Budgeting for the New Fiscal Year

The start of a new fiscal year is the perfect time to review and set up your budgets.

Using the Budget to Actuals Report

Aplos offers a Budget to Actuals report that compares your actual expenses and income against your budgeted amounts, also showing the difference.

Action Steps for Budget Review:

1. Generate the Budget to Actuals Report.
2. Review your actual spending and income against your previous year's budget.
3. Identify areas where you overspent or underspent. For example, if "Postage" significantly exceeded its budget, you might want to adjust its allocation for the upcoming year based on anticipated needs.

Reviewing and Updating Your Chart of Accounts

Before finalizing your budget, it's crucial to review your Chart of Accounts.

• If you anticipate new expenses or new income streams for the upcoming year that aren't currently listed, now is the time to add them to your Chart of Accounts. This ensures those fields will appear when you're building your budget.
• If you have any income or expenses you no longer would like to use, disable them on your chart of accounts to prevent them from being used when entering in your new budget
• Similarly, if you're starting a new ministry or initiative, create a new fund for it. This allows you to budget specifically for that new area if you have the advanced budgeting feature enabled.

Creating a New Budget

Once you have identified what your needs will be for the next fiscal year you can begin entering in your budget. To learn more about how to create a budget, check out our resource on Creating Your Annual Budget In Aplos.

By following these tips, you'll be well-prepared for a smooth fiscal year-end close and a strong start to your next financial period in Aplos.