 Well, hello, good morning, good afternoon, whatever time it is that you're joining us here for another episode of the nonprofit show. And if you've joined us earlier this week, you realize this is nonprofit Power Week thanks to your part-time controller. Today we have with us Daniel Tritch CPA at your part-time controller. Hi Dan. Dan's here to talk to us about three needs for your virtual accounting and this is really important now as we move and evolve back to that pivot and evolution into our workspace in the nonprofit community. We want to remind you who's here, Julia Patrick, enjoying a much needed day off, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jared Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group, honored to serve alongside Julia to provide these conversations and episodes for you, our viewers and our listeners. We could not do it and especially this nonprofit Power Week without our amazing presenting sponsors. So I'm going to give a quick verbal shout out. Thank you so very much to Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, which is also today's episode for nonprofit Power Week. We have Be Generous. We have Fundraising Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique and Nonprofit Thought Leader, as well as the nonprofit nerd. And it is special. So I want to give another call out to your part-time controller because this entire week is dedicated to that. So again, if you missed any of this week's episodes or any of our previous 600 plus, plus, plus episodes, you know where to find us. You can queue us up on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo, as well as podcast. So if you're a podcast listener like I am, and I'm curious, Dan, are you a podcast listener? I am, occasionally, but mostly when I'm driving. But since I do so much virtual accounting, I'm not driving as much anymore. So I need to get back into them. That's a great plug. I love that. So yeah, queue us up wherever you stream your entertainment for that. So yes, really excited to have you back, Dan. Dan Trich, CPA manager also at your part-time controller. Welcome, Dan. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm excited to have you on. You know, our relationship with you goes back several years. And so we've been working in this sector for quite some time. But go ahead and tell us a little bit about what you do, Dan, and as well as your part-time controller for our viewers and listeners that might be tuning in for the first time. Sure. So I'm actually the market leader for our remote or virtual West Coast office now. So I'm in charge of running our team in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. And what YPTC does when I indicate that I have a team, right? Our team is responsible for anything accounting related at our nonprofit clients. So soup to nuts accounting from bookkeeping all the way to CFO level analysis. We can pretty much do it all. We do like to focus a lot on financial reporting and making those reports digestible to both management and the board. I love the state of visualization. I love that piece. We had someone from your team on to talk about how you encapsulate those reports to share them with the board in that visual element and I just, I really nerd it out on that. So I have to, I have to get it all out there. Well, again, you're going to talk to us today about three needs that we need in our nonprofit organization for the virtual accounting. So let's dive into this and let's kick it off. I want you to talk to us about how we might invest in that flexibility and the cloud based system. Where do we start for this? And first I want to just address the acronym FTF. I thought it was a little clever because we think of it as face to face, right? But we're talking about virtual accounting here. So I created an acronym F2F that relates to virtual accounting and we'll go through each of them. So the first F is investing in a flexible cloud based accounting system. So I think that's really, really important because as we go through, as we gain more clients and we talk to our clients, we realize that a lot of organizations have invested in systems that don't talk to each other and that aren't cloud based. And in a time, especially around COVID, right, where everyone needed to access the accounting systems from home or from wherever they were, right? It became all of a sudden very important to have easy access to the accounting system. A cloud based accounting system will allow you to do that, whether you need to hire on a consultant or maybe you're away from your house or God forbid there's a natural disaster if you're down south, sometimes those happen, right? And you have to go away from home and you need to access your files. A cloud based accounting system is extremely helpful in implementing virtual accounting in your organization. And I also mentioned cloud based accounting system because they also tend to be the ones that talk to your other applications, your donor databases, your banks, things like that, and it eliminates duplication of effort with those systems. I really appreciate you mentioning this and when I think of cloud based system, I know that cybersecurity comes in play and there's a lot of those responsibilities and just everything we have to pay attention to. So having these cloud based systems and having them talk to one another is really important. Where do we start with even knowing what system would be the right one for us to integrate the other systems that you mentioned we might also be using? That's a good question and honestly what I do most of the time when we have clients who come on and have a, you know, we are what we call software agnostic. So if they have a cloud based accounting system, the first thing I'll do is Google and say whatever that is like financial edge integrations and I can look at the integrations list and see whether their other systems integrate with that system. So honestly, it's as easy as a Google search nowadays because most people when they're shopping for accounting systems are now looking for those types of integrations. You know, I do the same thing. So not accounting but fundraising. I look up, you know, that donor database to say, okay, Bloomerang, what are you, you know, what do you integrate with so I know, you know, who plays nicely with one another to create those efficiencies. So that is, you know, a big piece of that flexibility is having that cloud based system for your employees to use. And you're right Dan you had said this earlier, a lot of employees are coming, you know, to the job with that expectation to be able to work from home so investing in the system is is a critical piece. Now you're going to talk to us about training our staff on how to work with these virtual accounting tools. Where do we start with that. Sure. So a lot of especially the more expensive accounting systems or general edger systems that you purchase. Most of them will come with some training hours. However, if you're going to go for a cheaper accounting system like a quick books online. There's all sorts of training out there. However, it won't be good enough to tell your staff to go out and on their own time, watch some YouTube videos right. Their training needs to be very intentional people will not use what they do not understand. So you need to make sure that you're giving them intentional training on these new tools these new virtual accounting tools, because it can be very difficult to both do your job, and then also on the side, learn something new. So making sure again that you're intentional when you're onboarding your staff to these new tools is really critical for the on integration to be a success. I can't really imagine there's so many tools out there so you know when someone applies for a job and they say well I haven't used this tool, but I've used a similar tool. Like are there just a plethora of accounting systems and tools out there that staff know and, and also need to learn. Yeah, I mean, I think most seasoned accountants have used several different systems and in general the theme of the system is the same right on. You know you want to be able to produce financial states statements or other relevant reports out of them. You need the ability to post journal entries you need the ability to track your bank account activity and reconcile things like that. So whatever the systems are, almost all of them do that in some way shape or form right so we all know at least as accountants, what they're supposed to do, then it's just learning how this particular system handles that. So again though that can be difficult for some systems and I won't name any in particular here but it could be harder for some of the others. QuickBooks Online is one that's pretty easy to use for the most part but then again it doesn't have the power of some of the more difficult to use systems so researching which system is best for your organization is pretty critical in terms of getting that right level of ability, especially reporting ability out of that system, and then training your employees on it you don't want to go for the $10,000 system. If you don't need that because you're going to have to invest in a lot of training so that your employees can even figure out how to use it. What is my next question Dan is there like a certain sweet spot once your organization hits, you know, a certain number of full time employees are a certain amount of operating budget that we're saying okay now we've, you know, we've graduated from this system we've matured to this next system, are there levels for these cloud based systems that we need to consider. There are but it really it's not based on, you know, employee revenue number it can be based on any number of things. You know the complexity of the organization is a big one how you need to report on certain grants or for or to funders. You know you really have to look at what are the needs of your specific organization for the most part you know the organizations we work with, which are typically between $1 million and $15 million in revenue. If your online does a good enough job, and it's very cost effective right. However, for some that are in that range, it's not powerful enough to do the reporting that they need so it just depends and you have to really look at what are your management boards needs in terms of reporting and what are your funders needs. I want to go back to the statement you made is that yptc is truly software agnostic so working with yptc you're saying regardless of the system. You're on board you can help that's something that that you and your team can assist with talk to us about that because I can, can only imagine you've seen the gamut of you know organizations that are smaller because I know I have and it's like well we don't have a database we have we have some things kind of cobbled together have you worked with those cobbled systems. Yes, we've worked with pretty much. I shouldn't say every system under the sun but many many of them and ones that even after spending a decade and accounting I've never even heard of right. And I think the key to being able to do that as we really focus on finding people who love technology, and who believe that technology is critical part of their role in learning technology is a critical part of their role so if you are considering taking your organization into a virtual accounting realm. Make sure you're talking to your staff and gauging their comfortable there, how comfortable they are with new technology because it's going to be a slog if they don't enjoy learning new things. That's something that's something that can be very difficult if you're saying hey we're going to switch accounting systems and they're just reading it right. Whereas for someone like me, I see something new out there and I'm just like so excited to go out and learn how this is so much different than what I've been doing before and how it can help me do my job better. Yeah, and I heard you say we know what we need to do it's just learning a new system and how those buttons and functions perhaps work differently in the system. It's the same concept it's just everything does it just a little bit differently. And some things are, you know some systems are a little faster some are just a little bit more onerous but they're more powerful right so they're onerous for a reason it's just finding that right fit for your staff and your organization. Well, I can only imagine you know training staff to work with a virtual accounting tools. That has to advance more and more and more because as our workforce continues to advance into this virtual space or work from anywhere. This is a really big component in in the workspace of the community. Again today's you know show we're talking about the three needs for your virtual accounting and Dan has put together at the FTF and so we're on the final F here which you're going to share with us. How we find a reliable technology firm or information technology IT firm to support the technology that we're using. Let's go into this because I'm really curious just just like the systems there's a lot of IT firms out there so how do we find the right one that works for us. You definitely want one that's a partner with you and can be forward looking in terms of your IT security and your IT support because if you're going from being mostly in house on the server. You know, and now you're going to do a virtual accounting with people working from home you're going to need someone to advise you on how on how best to set that up and how best to maintain security for your organization. That is not something we do but that's something that we know is critically important for nonprofits out there is to make sure that they have that partner who's aware of the most current threats that are out there if you are taking all of your systems online. If you could in theory be more exposed to online threats however with a really good at it accounting firm you should be fairly safe so that's why it's one of the three things I talked about with with virtual accounting it's because it is just that important. And again this week is nonprofit Power Week thanks with your part time controller or YPTC like we all like to call it. Jennifer Aliva came on on Tuesday and so if you are worried about some of your virtual technologies or some of the frightening financial fails I think was the title of that show. Jennifer really did dive deeper into, you know, making sure that your cybersecurity was in place for internal threats external threats. But I'm glad you mentioned that because Dan I'm curious. How long have you been in this virtual accounting space because is this newer for you is it even newer for the industry. I think I'm on year four now of really just doing, doing a lot of virtual accounting work, honestly, so it's I guess you could say is still newer for me but that's about a third of my career that I've now been kind of interested in working in this space. So definitely something that I've become much more adept at and now I run an entirely remote market so now this is my every day. So YPTC fully virtual. Is that as well because I know they work virtually with clients. Yeah, they can be. We can be fully virtual prior to the pandemic we had several physical locations and we're still going to have physical office locations going forward but we all every single one of our 500 employees has the ability to work virtually Yeah, that is amazing and I can only imagine the advancements of technology and how this you know plays into that. What else can you share when it comes to that you know reliability on the IT firms what we should what should we be looking for. I'm not sure responsiveness because if someone gets a lot out of their account or they are afraid maybe they have a virus on their company provided computer you need an organization, an IT from that's responsive. Here's the other thing I always plug in if there's I think there's a couple people from my company watching this now and they're probably roll their eyes because I always plug it but it's true. IT firm that is willing to look forward and try and prepare your organization for the for the threats that are coming like spearfishing or becoming more prevalent like spearfishing, making sure that that company is for example, sending your employees fake phishing emails to test to see whether they're asking that all critical question am I expecting this am I expecting this email and I expecting this phone call IT company should partner with you to teach your employees to ask that question. When they get something they're not expecting. If they're not expecting deleted. Do not open it. And that is one of the biggest things you can do to make your organization safe as you move to virtual accounting is to teach your employees how to spot these threats and an IT firm should be a partner with you and doing them. It's really good to know I feel that what I've seen in my professional career Dan is it tends to go to the staff member that knows how to plug in the right wires into the right holes and it's like, I don't think that's quite the reliability of an IT that is looking for now you definitely need a partner as you're moving into the virtual space to be able to troubleshoot just very simple things with a computer, maybe for your not so tech savvy people but then also be very aware of how the space is changing and be able to safeguard your information. Yeah, I'm curious we have we still have some more time with us Dan to talk about the FTF and again remind everyone this acronym because it's not face to face. It's invest in a flexible account cloud based accounting system, train your employees on your virtual accounting tools and then find a reliable IT firm to support your staff during and after your tech transitions. Wow, well I'm really curious when it comes to the IT and I'm kind of going back to that virtual training you know and so training the staff on the accounting tools. I'm really curious because you mentioned something that really piqued my interest, you know we can't just rely on them to watch a video tutorial. So are we setting aside time for the staff to train into this and then yet talk to us more about that what does that look like. Yeah, I mean setting aside time is critical I mean I come from. I was a teacher for two years and I don't know if I've ever mentioned that to you Jared I'm sure I have I mentioned it the most. One thing I learned while teaching was just how intentional you have to be about learning new things. And just saying the expectation is that your staff that might already be working 40 or 50 hours a week maybe even more. It's their job on their own time to learn a system. It's not going to work whether you think it should or shouldn't. It won't I can just guarantee it they're not going to do it on their own time at eight o'clock at night after their kids have gone to bed they're not going to watch YouTube videos so make sure that you're being very intentional about it again if you buy the more expensive they will let you know about what that integration looks like, and they will give you training hours and kind of schedule those things with you. If you're getting the kind of the easier to use systems like a quick books online or a zero or something like that. There are lots of YouTube videos online but there are also courses you can buy online and I would encourage you to look through your options and schedule time for your staff to learn the new system. But aren't there also like advancements in these like like even with our with our phones right it's like hey we have a new technology download like is that also happening in these virtual. You know the cloud based systems were accounting that there's new downloads or new you know systems that are integrated in. Yeah one nice thing about most cloud based systems is that they update automatically they don't have to download they just do it and they'll usually inform you if it's a major update but for the most part updates are focused on stability and keeping them online. So you'll see if you actually have desktop based accounting software in that particular company is starting to move to the cloud you will start to see your desktop desktop based software get updated less and less because they're moving everything as best they can to the cloud. That's the sort of thing you don't have to worry about when you're in the cloud is that those are being updated and monitored constantly whereas you would get occasional patches on your desktop version. Okay well that's really good to know and I'm curious you know I'm sure there's a lot of viewers a lot of listeners listening to this nonprofit. Power week with your part time controller but as we talk about you know the virtual accounting with you Dan I'm curious if a nonprofit is interested in allowing either their current staff to work virtually. Or to bring on a new staff member and as we mentioned, there's a lot of staff right now that in the negotiation period of a new hire and even some existing staff they're re negotiating to say, hey I really enjoyed working for from home. Like, how should we even integrate this work from home or this you know FTF as you mentioned it for staff members do you have any best practices. Again I think anytime you're making a big change getting staff buy in is a huge part of it but as you already mentioned people are demanding this anyway. And for our clients that can't hire my first question is, are you allowing flexibility to work from home. If they're not hiring if they're having trouble hiring right now and they say no to that that's my first recommendation is, hey you need to start being more flexible on that because it's going to be very difficult to hire out there and if it isn't difficult enough already it's going to get even worse because younger, younger people are expecting to be able to have that flexibility they know. Especially the really young ones they've gone to school, virtually for a year right. They know that if it's required it can happen right that I've heard someone say that the biggest lie our employers always told us was that you can't do your work from home. Well coven show that that really wasn't the case the will just needed to be there. Well I think when you're hiring people you need to show that the will is there to be flexible. I mean if your people are demanding it then it sounds there's no one more valuable in your organization and the people you have right so you need to listen to them and whatever it takes to integrate is probably what you're going to have to do. That being said, again, it's not like cloud accounting is new it's been around for years now so they're very easy ways to integrate these things as long as you're not switching from one system that's very different to another. And even if you're doing that, if you have the funds, they can do that transition for you. It can be onerous but again it's gotten a lot easier over the years to do this so it doesn't have to be this monumental task to get it done. It's it's possible to do it, it planted out so that it's not too onerous anyone. You know I'm so glad that you mentioned that because it is the way of the world and I've seen it so much you know with so many different age groups, not just the younger group but also you know older season more employees that are saying, hey I really enjoyed not sitting in traffic you know deal with that commute. But you know really looking at this that cloud based system is so important but I still feel Dan there's people that say we have to have accounting like on our campus in our team there has to be like a vault something locked up but I love that white BTC is demonstrating the best practice on, you know how to secure your virtual systems in this accounting and as you mentioned, it's not new. It's not new and I would argue to that like even a brick and mortar location with locked file cabinets is far less safe than having a login where you're storing all of your payment information that has dual factor authentication and constantly changing I think that is pretty safe and you want to make sure that again you're talking with your IT firm to make sure that those authentications and logins are safe given the latest threats but there's lots of great tech tools out there for virtual accounting that are actually improving internal controls. So something to consider as well as that these new tools not only allow your people to work from home or work from wherever they are but they're actually an improvement in internal controls for your organization. Well it makes me think about you know we're also every single day every single entry we're working towards that financial audit in some way shape or form. So making sure that we've dotted our eyes we've crossed our T's so that when that auditor comes in for the financial audit or our financial reviews, we have these best practices in place and remind me does white BTC do financial reviews and or audits. Nope, we do no attest engagement so we don't do audits we don't do reviews we don't do compilations anything like that we also don't do form 990s or any tax work but we will facilitate all of those processes. Yeah, so it'd be the allusion for them, which I love that preparation to make sure that, like I said, those eyes are dotted and those T's are crossed so well all of this has been fantastic and again the FTF you know the final one is finding that reliable IT firm to support your technology. You gave us some great insight there Dan and I'm really glad that you did. And if you have joined us this week you've noticed that it is Power Week as we like to call it it's kind of our spin on Shark Week, but nonprofit Power Week with the, with your part time controller here at the nonprofit show. Hey, YPTC has so many amazing resources. Many of them, if not most are free so please do make sure that you're getting the latest and I want to say greatest news and accounting information from YPTC. Now those of you listening their web address is YPTC.com. And this new section for those of you watching you can see there's some really great information on their website. There's a lot of great webinars and resources and tools again I mentioned earlier about a data visualization episode that we had on with an amazing member from YPTC so there's so much great information that you Dan are putting out and your colleagues are putting out. Is there anything else coming up that we might want to know about or kind of mark our calendars. Um, I'm sure there is but I'm drawing a blank at the moment so I'm sure we'll plug it later. Well, absolutely and then I think if my memories are recalling for me properly. Is there a podcast now for YPTC. There is yes and you can get access it straight from that site as well so there is a podcast now I think that'd be great for those of you who are still having to commute or if you like to listen to podcasts in your office. You know I like to podcast when I'm walking that's my big thing. I'm walking the dog or getting ready or taking a lunch break so do check out your part time controllers podcast it is fantastic it's queued up in my section as well and I just really love it you know I am not a financial nerd. And so I'm a nonprofit nerd but not as I'm not, you know, attuned to this financial side so I always consume my information thanks to YPTC that makes it so readily accessible. Thanks to Dan again for being here on Daniel Tritch CPA manager with your part time controller. We've had such a great opportunity to meet with you in person a couple of times Dan and that's just been fantastic. But again, Julie and I are always super impressed by the entire team at your part time controller. So check them out. If you're curious about anything that Dan has mentioned today in the episode. Find more information at YPTC calm Dan's also on LinkedIn I always like to give that shout out for for our guests. So find them on LinkedIn they're always here to help, just as we are so again Julia Patrick and myself Jared ransom excited to be here for a nonprofit power week. We don't do these weeks often so it really is a special time that we do that this entire week has been fantastic we just talked a little bit about yesterday's so if you missed it you can you can surely find it. But again thank you to our presenting sponsors to keep the nonprofit show going and growing allow these power weeks that's a deep dive into for this week accounting and systems to work for your nonprofit. So a shout out of gratitude to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy at National University be generous, your part time controller staffing boutique and nonprofit thought leader, as well as nonprofit nerd so we like to remind you, you know we are really so grateful for our presenting sponsors and thanks to YPTC. The week's not over. We've got tomorrow still so make sure you turn in or tune in tomorrow to join us for tomorrow's episode. Dan thank you it's been fantastic. Thank you so much for having me I really appreciate it. Well I appreciate your time and your expertise in this because again it is not my will house or my zone of genius. So I always look for you and your part time information. So thank you so very much. Do join us back here tomorrow for another episode of the nonprofit show with your part time controller. And until then, stay well, so you can do well. Thanks again Dan.