Written by Nils R. | Dec 14, 2020 8:00:00 AM
What is
a
Statement of Activities for a Nonprofit Organization
? Statement of activities reports are considered highly important financial statements and are used by executives and accountants to perform monthly financial analysis. Some of the key functionality in this type of report is that it is parameter driven and can be run for a month and across one or multiple organizational units. The report details revenues and expenses by account. Rows can be expanded by the user to see the individual accounts. The columns provide current period, last year and budget comparisons and variances. The traffic lights helps highlight good and bad variances. The year-to-date (YTD) columns can also be expanded to see the individual months that make up the YTD amounts. You find an example of this type of report below.
Purpose of
Statement of Activities Reports Nonprofits and associations use Statement of Activities Reports to give executives and department heads an easy to read monthly financial review. When used as part of good business practices in a Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) department, an organization can improve its analysis and related decision-making as well as reduce the chances that managers lose sight of important variances and trends.
Statement of Activities Report
Example Here is an example of a Statement of Activities report with dynamic, expandable rows and columns. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2560"]
Statement of Activities Report Example for a Nonprofit Organization[/caption] You can find hundreds of additional examples
here
Who Uses This Type of
Report
? The typical users of this type of report are: Executives, boards, department heads, accountants.
Other
Report
s Often Used in Conjunction with
Statement of Activities Reports Progressive Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) departments sometimes use several different Statement of Activities Reports, along with balance sheets, cash flow statements, financial dashboards, budget and forecast models and other management and control tools.
Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From? The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others. In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models or from professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions.
What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards? Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:
- Native ERP report writers and query tools
- Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
- Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Cloud Solutions and More Examples
