When your accountant sets up and pays for your books
What a small non-profit should understand when its accounting firm sets up and pays for its books: who works in them, taking them over, and ending it.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Non-profit businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Your treasurer is a volunteer with a day job. Receipts arrive in a shoebox, the bank statements are downloaded once a quarter, and the annual financial statements depend on the goodwill of an accountant who has supported the organisation for years. Then the accountant makes an offer: the firm will set your books up on Achekam and carry the cost, so that your transactions are recorded properly through the year.
For a small non-profit, that can be a generous and practical arrangement. It can also leave you unsure about basic things. Whose books are they? What happens if the firm stops paying for its own plan? What if, one day, you want a different accountant?
This article answers those questions so you can agree the arrangement with your eyes open.
What the arrangement is
An accounting firm on Achekam can set up books for a client that has no Achekam workspace of its own, and pay for them. Your organisation does not have to sign up, choose a plan or manage settings to get started; the firm creates the books and does the work in them.
That suits an organisation with no finance staff. The people who understand double-entry bookkeeping are the ones holding the pen, and your treasurer can concentrate on approving payments and reporting to the board. Oversight stays with the board: the National Council of Nonprofits' page on financial management sets out the board's fiduciary duty over a non-profit's money and the financial policies, such as cash handling and spending authority, that support sound financial management.
Your books, kept in one ledger
When a firm works in a client's books on Achekam, it works directly in that client's own ledger. There is no copy kept at the firm and no separate version sent back to you. What the firm posts is what the books contain.
For a non-profit, that removes a familiar problem: the accountant's version of the figures differing from the treasurer's spreadsheet. There is one set of books, and the financial statements, the budget comparison and the funder reports all come from it.
Taking the books over on your own plan
The arrangement does not have to last for ever. Your organisation can later take the books over on its own Business plan. When you do, the history the firm has built up comes with you; you are not starting again.
Taking over makes sense when the organisation grows: when you hire a finance officer, when funders start asking for monthly figures, or when you want your own staff to raise requisitions and record bills. The firm can still work in your books afterwards, as your appointed accountant.
Choosing what the firm can do once you take over
Once the books are on your own plan, the firm's role in them works the way it does for any business on Achekam. A business appoints its accounting firm by the firm's Achekam address or firm code, in a role such as accountant, auditor, tax practitioner, payroll provider or adviser, with an access level, and the firm accepts or declines.
The access level decides what the firm's people can do:
| Access level | What the firm can do |
|---|---|
| Bookkeeping | Work in the accounting, but not manage your users, settings or payment gateways |
| Review | Read only |
If you want the firm to keep doing the bookkeeping after you take over, bookkeeping access lets it carry on without being able to change who has access to your organisation's books. If you later bring in an independent examiner or auditor, review access gives them a view without the ability to change anything.
If the firm's plan lapses
There is one risk to understand before you agree. If the accounting firm's own plan lapses, the books it set up for you turn read-only for your organisation. Nothing is deleted, but nothing new can be recorded until the situation is resolved.
For a non-profit in the middle of a grant period, a pause in recording can be awkward. Agree with the firm that it will tell you in writing well before any change to its own subscription, and keep in mind that taking the books over on your own plan removes the dependency altogether.
Ending the arrangement
Either side can end an appointment. When it ends, the firm loses access to the books and the books stay with the business. A reason is asked for, kept on the record and shown to the other side, so the end of the relationship is documented rather than left to an e-mail.
If you plan to move to another accountant, take the books over on your own plan first, so that they are firmly yours, then end the old appointment and appoint the new firm.
Questions to agree before you start
Before accepting the offer, settle these with the firm, and minute the answers at your next board meeting:
- Who in our organisation approves payments and signs off the monthly figures?
- How will source documents, such as receipts, invoices and grant agreements, reach you?
- How often will the books be brought up to date, and when will we see the figures?
- What notice will you give us of any change to your own plan?
- When would it make sense for us to take the books over?
- If we part ways, how will the handover of working papers be arranged?
With the books in good order, you can start using them for more than year-end statements. See tracking grant spending against the budget, and for the controls a board should expect on purchasing, spotting warning signs in purchasing.
Before you reply to your accountant's offer, put these six questions on the agenda of your next board or finance committee meeting.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
