CLN Financial Tracking for Sponsored Projects

Financial Templates

• Each  Fiscally Sponsored Project is required to keep up their own Finances  & Budget Spreadsheets.  This can either be done with volunteers or  paying people to help.  A Fisically Sponsorsed project is resposnible  for their own financal accounting.  If your org knows that it will be  difficult to get their finances started, updated spreadsheets, or keep  up with on-going financial tracking, you should plan on creating a line  item in your budget for financial support.  The CLN umbrella can help  with internal project finances, but will request componsation beyond the %  that has already been allocated if possible.  Overall a Sponsored Project is  expected to do their best to keep up with their financial reporting, but we  understand that it isn't easy to do it perfectly acording to our  specific processes, so there will always be mistakes.  Most importantly  is to keep up with all the legal protocols including submiting a program  budget and get it appoved by the CLN Board before you start spending money,  and keep the board updated with any major changes in the budget.  Also  your Annual Report will also include basic financial reporting including  income and expenditures, and this is essencial for the legal reporting  of the Umbrella non-profit.
• Creating Your Finance and Budget Spreadsheets:
  • You  will need to get your template spreadsheet from the CLN, and use the  processes and financial templates so that we can easily integrate all  the budgets and finances between all of the variety of projects and  programs within the Umbrella non-profit.  The process of creating and  updating these financial spreadsheets can take months depending on how  many transactions you have, so this does not need to happen in a hurry.
  • The Google Spreadsheet is accessable online by anyone, and will include the following 6 sub-spreadsheets within the doccument:
    • Current Assets & Bank Holdings
      • This  is a snap shot of all your programs current assets and Cash on hand.   This includes bank holdings, as well as cash on hand, or cash at your  house.  This should be kept updated quarterly,monthly, weekly, even  daily, but just do your best to keep it up to date.
    • Transactions: Ballance Sheet: Income & Expenditures
      • This  is a on-going tabulation of income, expenditures, and transfers,  including donations, revenue, anytime that you have money comming in, we  have to keep it recorded.  Income does not include transfers between  accounts, and goes in a different column.  Expenditures is any output of  funds for any purpose.  Many times we make multiple different  tranaction and ballance spreadsheets for different accounts, or  different sub programs.  This doesn't have to be your primary ballance  sheet, but it will be the primary reporting and publicly accountable  spreadsheet for your program by accounting for all transaction, in  multiple accounts including cash, checks, and debit cards.
    • Budget Current Annual/Program Budget
      • Typcally  a Program Budget will be created as a Seperate doccument, but should be  coppied and pasted into the primary Finances Spreadsheets when  completed and approved.
    • Temporal Budget
      • The  temporal budget, although it is a little extra work, is a great system  to keep track of your finances in a more reailistic model than a general  program/annual budget.  The system is very simple, you start with the  total money you currently have in the bank, and then budget out the  existing and expected expenses into the future.
    • People Paid Tallies
      • This  is an on-going talley of people who have recived funds from your  program.  It should be broken down by yearly columns.  If you don't pay  individuals, then you can ignore this and leave it blank.
    • Accets
      • This  is an on-going list of existing assets within the organization and the  estimated value if sold on craigslist or eBay for a reasonable amount  that would sell sooner than later.  The value should be at least  $50-$100 before we would go to the effort to sell it. If there are no  sellable assets, then you can leave this blank and not worry about it.