TLDR
As board treasurer, you need to verify fund balances, review restricted fund spending, and report to the board with confidence. If you depend on staff to email you reports that you cannot independently verify, you are not fulfilling your fiduciary duty. RestrictedBooks gives board members read-only dashboard access to fund balances, audit trails, and financial statements without needing staff to pull reports for you.
The Treasurer’s Oversight Problem
As a volunteer board treasurer, you likely spend 5-10 hours per month on organizational finances. Most of that time goes to reviewing reports that staff emailed you, preparing a summary for the board meeting, and asking follow-up questions that take days to get answered.
This workflow has a structural problem: you can only see what staff shows you, and you see it days or weeks after the fact. If restricted fund spending is off track, you find out at the next board meeting, which may be a month later. If the net asset classifications are wrong, you do not know until the auditor flags it.
Self-serve access to the accounting system changes this. Not so you can do the bookkeeping, but so you can independently verify the numbers your fiduciary duty requires you to oversee.
What Self-Serve Access Looks Like
In RestrictedBooks, board members get a read-only dashboard that shows fund balances (unrestricted and each restricted fund), the statement of financial position, the statement of activities, and a restricted fund spending summary. You cannot create transactions, modify entries, or change settings. You can view real-time financial data and export reports.
This means the week before a board meeting, you open the dashboard, review fund balances, identify any restricted funds approaching depletion, and prepare your treasurer’s report with current numbers. No emails, no waiting, no dependence on staff availability.
What to Look for Each Month
Start with the unrestricted fund balance. This is the organization’s operating flexibility. If it covers fewer than 3 months of operating expenses, the organization is at risk of a cash flow crisis. Next, check each restricted fund balance against its budget. A restricted fund that is 80% spent with 50% of the grant period remaining is trending over budget. Finally, look at the net over/under position across all restricted funds. A pattern of overspending across multiple grants suggests systemic budgeting problems.
These are the numbers that protect the organization and fulfill your duty as treasurer. If your current software cannot show them to you on demand, it is failing the board.
The Fiduciary Argument for Better Software
When you raise the topic of accounting software with the executive director, the framing matters. This is not about convenience or technology preferences. It is about fiduciary duty and audit risk. As treasurer, you are personally exposed if the organization’s financial reporting is inadequate. Software that does not support fund accounting natively creates the reporting gaps that produce audit findings.
RestrictedBooks costs $20-$99/month. An audit finding due to net asset misclassification costs thousands in corrective action and can disqualify the organization from grants. The math is straightforward.
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See plans & pricing- Fiduciary Duty
- A board treasurer's legal obligation to ensure the organization's finances are properly managed, reported, and safeguarded. This includes verifying that restricted funds are spent according to donor intent and that financial statements are accurate. 'I trusted the staff' is not a legal defense if something goes wrong.
DEFINITION
- Fund Balance
- The net amount available in a specific fund: total revenue received into the fund minus total expenses charged against it. Each restricted fund has its own balance. If a restricted fund balance goes negative, the organization has spent more than the grant or donation provided, which is a compliance violation.
DEFINITION
- Net Asset Classification
- The GAAP-required categorization of a nonprofit's assets as 'without donor restrictions' or 'with donor restrictions.' The treasurer should verify these classifications monthly because errors here produce the most common audit findings.
DEFINITION
Q&A
What fund balance information should a treasurer review before each board meeting?
Three things: the unrestricted fund balance (operating flexibility), the balance of each restricted fund relative to its budget (grant compliance), and any restricted funds that are within 10% of being fully spent (approaching depletion). This takes 15 minutes if you have self-serve access to the system. It takes a week of email exchanges if you depend on staff to produce reports.
Q&A
Why do I need self-serve access instead of relying on staff reports?
Two reasons. First, independent verification is part of your fiduciary duty. If you only see numbers that staff chose to show you, you cannot verify them independently. Second, timeliness. Board meetings have fixed dates. Waiting for staff to produce reports introduces delays. Self-serve access means you can review current data on your schedule.
Q&A
What does a negative restricted fund balance mean?
It means the organization has spent more from that fund than it received. This is a compliance problem because restricted money can only be spent on its intended purpose. A negative balance means either unrestricted money was used to cover the gap (which should be documented as an interfund transfer) or the fund was overspent (which may require returning money to the funder).
Frequently asked