At Cougar Mountain Software, we are very excited to be a new addition to the NeonCRM family. With Denali FUND and NeonCRM’s donor management program, you not only get true fund accounting software for your organization, but you also get all the benefits of NeonCRM’s complete donor management solution.

NeonCRM gives you a variety of features that integrate with Denali FUND such as:

• Importing recurring, anonymous, and memorial donations directly into General Ledger
• Tracking grant applications
• Managing donor relationships, running campaigns, and tracking volunteers
• Accessing NeonCRM through any device with internet access
• Collecting donor information and payments through web-based forms

Every organization needs accounting. But what about a government agency, what kind of accounting does it require? According to AccountingEdu.org, “The goals of federal, state or municipal government agencies when applying the principals of accounting are different from the private sector’s main business objective of earning profit…government agencies and other recipients of government money are fiscally accountable to tax payers and must demonstrate compliance with the intended uses of…resources.”

We compiled this list of Top 5 Software Features for Government Accounting to help you determine what is most important for your agency.

Fund Accounting

Fund accounting is a method of accounting that allows you to keep the programs within your organization separated by fund numbers. Each fund, labeled as restricted, temporarily restricted, or unrestricted, contains its own chart of accounts. The biggest difference between fund accounting and regular accounting is fund accounting emphasizes accountability rather than profitability.

Let’s dig a little more into how fund accounting works.

According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, nonprofits account for 5.3% of the GDP. That equals more than 1.5 million organizations accounting for 9.2% of all wages and salaries paid in the United States. That many organizations, all handling money on a daily basis, require a powerful accounting software solution. Denali FUND from Cougar Mountain Software is designed to handle the breadth of these organizations from the smallest to the largest, as well as the complexity of each organization’s individual finances.

Nonprofit accounting requires flexibility and customization. Nothing captures the essentials of nonprofit accounting agility like Cougar Mountain Software’s Denali FUND. Denali FUND offers modular flexibility, breakout budgets, a secure audit trail, individual user tracking, and customized reporting. Putting these essentials to work with Denali FUND will solve your nonprofit accounting challenges in an accessible and tailored format.

Responsibility of Board Members

According to research published in the Marquette report and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud & Abuse (2016), those who commit fraud (for the first time) are among the most trusted in their organization(s). These are competent, educated employees that have risen to a level in their careers where they have access to assets and less oversight. Exceptionally few perpetrators are below 30 years of age or above 60 years. Individuals between those two ages account for 83% of cases. While data suggests that fraud is an equal opportunity crime (both genders commit the offense in equal numbers), men steal around 25% more than their female counterparts. Another interesting factoid: the longer individuals are employed, the more they steal.

Forensic accountant and Certified Fraud Examiner, Denise McClure, explains the story behind these numbers. Seasoned employees steal more than their untried workmates because they can justify it, she says. “I should have gotten a raise years ago,” “I’m under-appreciated,” “I’m only borrowing this money,” are all common rationalizations-turned-manifestos that help first-time offenders justify their illicit behavior. In the 1940s, Donald Cressy, a criminology student at Indiana University, hypothesized that there were three conditions necessary for someone to commit fraud: 1) a non-sharable financial pressure, 2) opportunity, and 3) rationalization. Today, experts call this combination the Fraud Triangle.

How You Can Close the Books and Ring in the New Fiscal Year on Time

It takes 60 seconds for the ball in New York’s Times Square to drop 141 feet and officially ring in the New Year. That’s not a lot of time to consider all the things you want to accomplish in the next 365 days, let alone think about all the things you didn’t quite get to before 11:59 on December 31.

Nonetheless, as you’re contemplating your quarter-one goals, and why you didn’t quite get around to running that marathon, you don’t also want to be confronted by the things you could have done better or devoted more time to, including your year-end financial close.

With the end of the year so near, we’re giving you our top four pro tips for ensuring your books are closed well before the clock strikes 12.

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