The Finance Calendar: An Essential Tool that is Useful to All

I need to be more grateful for my “over-worked” and “under-appreciated” finance calendar. In my experience, nonprofit organizations gain comfort from its content and a sense of order and completeness from its structure, as do their many end-users, both inside and outside of the organization.

I always insist on assembling an annual finance calendar for each nonprofit I work with, whether as a financial professional or as a volunteer treasurer. As one would expect, the finance calendar provides a global overview of the key dates that affect the flow of information through and around the finance department.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the finance calendar has also proven to be exceptionally useful to many others outside the finance department. For example, the finance calendar is useful internally to management and staff, the President, Treasurer, and other officers, as well as Board and committee members. The finance calendar is also useful externally to outside professional advisors and vendors such as auditors, fundraisers, financial advisors, IT professionals, website content managers, and others.

Before I explain these many uses, let’s first explore the purpose, format, structure and content of a finance calendar.

1. Purpose

The main purpose of the finance calendar is to provide a comprehensive listing of the key deliverables, dates, and deadlines where input from the finance department is essential. These, of course, include financial statements and/or management reports (dashboards, projections and forecasts, general ledger schedules, etc.), the meetings at which these documents are used and/or reviewed (Board meeting, finance committee meetings, investment committee meetings, etc.), as well as critical external filings that rely on financial information (Form 990, charitable solicitation registrations, business licenses, etc.).

Even more importantly, the finance calendar ensures that financial statements and management reports are provided to management and staff in a timely manner so they have the necessary financial information to manage financial assets efficiently in support of mission, programs, and operations (which should always be the number one priority for use of financial information).

2. Format

My preferred primary format is a simple word document that is easy to edit and share with others. I have also found it convenient to use excel in various columnar formats where you can get more creative with the structure, however I tend to treat this as my secondary format to fulfill an internal monthly compliance and checklist role. There are also numerous calendar and task-management programs available that work well for sharing information with many people. No one format is inherently superior, so feel free to use the format with which your key end-users (e.g., staff and Board and committee members) are most comfortable.

3. Structure

There are two basic alternatives for structuring the finance calendar: content-based or date-based.  I prefer to organize the finance calendar by content because it better allows you to quickly find major tasks and deliverables. The content format also allows you to see all the steps and sub-steps in a particular task. This is especially helpful for complicated multi-step tasks like preparing a budget for the next fiscal year, which involves many steps that are usually spread out over multiple months. I use a basic word document format for the content format.

The advantage of using a date-based structure is that you can more easily anticipate and manage workload requirements on a month-over-month basis. Tasks and due dates often overlap. A date-based structure allows you to view all tasks and deliverables within a month to better plan for meeting deliverable dates and managing tasks, workloads, and staff assignments.

4.  Content

The content of the finance calendar, of course, is the key. A finance calendar that comprehensively addresses all finance-related tasks and deliverables will be the most useful. Organize your content into primary and secondary tasks and deliverables. Primary tasks and deliverables regularly occur and are essential to operations and governance. Secondary tasks and deliverables occur less frequently and usually require less involvement from management, staff and leadership. The following list illustrates how you might separate primary and secondary finance calendar tasks and deliverables:

PRIMARY:

• Accounting Department Monthly Closing Cycle

• Monthly Financial Statement Delivery Dates and Projection Updates

• Accounting Department Year-End Closing Schedule

• Independent Audit Process

• Form 990 Preparation and Process

• Board of Director Meetings

• Executive Committee Meetings

• Annual Budget Preparation Process

• Employee Performance Evaluation Process

• Processing Payroll

• Cash Disbursements Cycle

SECONDARY:

• Finance Committee Meetings

• Investment Committee Meetings

• Audit Committee Meetings

• Charitable Solicitation Filings

• Business Licenses and Other State and Local Tax Filings

• W-2s and 1099s

• Retirement and Benefit Plan Filings

• Support to Other Committees and Special Task Forces:

  • Membership Committee

  • Development Committee

  • Merger Task Force

Planning Tip – Make sure to include as many subtasks as possible that are necessary to complete each deliverable in a timely manner. This objective is best viewed through the date-based format. The content-based format works best for non-financial and external end-users. Consequently, I often prepare both, content-based in Word document form and a more detailed report with subtasks in the date-based format in Excel document form. 

5.  Uses

Finance calendars, in their various forms, are extremely useful to all finance department personnel. In addition, they are also a useful tool for many others within and without an organization. The following list discusses different groups of individuals that will benefit from receiving the finance calendar, and how it can positively impact the fulfillment of their duties.

Internal Users:

• Managers and Staff – the finance calendar helps them look ahead and gain a global view of the tasks and deliverables required for major financial cycles (compiling the next fiscal year’s budget, issuing monthly financial statements and management reports, year-end audit, Form 990, etc.) and better plan their own schedules around the times when their input is needed (updating monthly rolling projections, employee performance evaluations, etc.).

• Officers – as key fiduciaries of the organization, the finance calendar allows them to keep an eye on the flow of financial information and fulfill their fiduciary duties related to finance monitoring and stewardship (specifically, the duty of care and the duty of obedience).

• Board Members – the finance calendar helps them to fulfill their fiduciary duties and gain comfort that the organization has a complete plan of action to manage finances and meet accountability and transparency best practices.

• Finance Committee – the finance calendar can become their unofficial agenda for the year, guiding the timing related to key financial oversight roles. The finance calendar should include finance committee meeting dates and key deliverables for each finance committee meeting.
  Investment Committee – the finance calendar allows the investment committee to observe financial cycles and governance interaction from a distance, helping investment committee members to fulfill their obligations and timely report to the Board of Directors.

• Audit Committee – the finance calendar serves as an additional resource for the audit committee, showing them chronologically the many steps of the audit process along with completion dates for corresponding tasks. They will also be able to see other related finance department functions and deadlines such as the Form 990 and registrations and licenses that have compliance considerations impacting the financial statement audit.

External Users:

• Independent Auditors – a well-organized finance calendar demonstrates a healthy respect for internal controls and shows a commitment to enhanced compliance and meeting important deliverable dates.

• Financial Advisors and Banking Institutions – the finance calendar helps financial advisors and banking institutions gain comfort that you are a well-managed and thoughtful organization and gain insights from seeing your organization’s key financial cycles.

• Other Outside Advisors – the finance calendar helps insurance carriers and brokers, legal counsel, risk management advisors, IT professionals, and other outside advisors understand your organization’s key financial cycles and accounting procedures and practices, enabling them to provide advice that is more aligned with your organization’s needs.

The finance calendar is an amazingly useful tool. Preparing one helps to boost your internal control system and provides a measure of stability in support of the many activities, tasks and deliverables that require financial information and interaction with your finance department and accounting systems.