Picture this scenario. At the start of the year, you contacted your athletic booster club officers to start preparing your previous year’s tax documents. However, you quickly realized that the accounting information you needed was scattered across dozens of spreadsheets and stored in a variety of locations. The previous treasurer had some information on a thumb drive. Someone had a spreadsheet somewhere. There was a previous software service that no one has the login for. And some of the data from previous years is even in a three-ring binder!
Does this scenario sound all too familiar? If so, it’s time to ditch your spreadsheet-based accounting strategy for a more modern approach.
Dangers of Spreadsheet-Based Accounting
Before we reveal how you can get your finances in order, let’s zoom in a bit on the dangers of spreadsheet-based accounting.
The biggest issue with this approach is that it can lead to errors in your tax documents. It is easy to make errors when the system you are using is not designed specifically for the task. If you file inaccurate reports with the IRS, they’ll call foul — and may even dish out a hefty penalty in the process. Penalties could be more than you would have paid in taxes to begin with.
Furthermore, spreadsheet-based accounting is inefficient, especially as the complexity of the transactions, quantity of dollars managed, and total number of transactions increases with a growing booster club. Even if you manage to find the documents you need and get your tax forms filed by the set deadlines, you’re going to waste a lot of time in the process. Wouldn’t that time be better spent volunteering or planning fundraisers? Of course it would.
The good news is you can break the cycle by investing in some affordable and efficient technology solutions.
Getting Your Financials in Order
When it comes to managing your athletic booster clubs finances using digital methods, you have two choices:
Standalone Accounting Software
If your booster club is an incorporated non-profit, your club should be using some type of accounting platform to manage its finances. The most basic approach is standalone accounting software, which is affordable and helps you consolidate all of your financial data in one place.
That said, there are two shortcomings associated with this approach. First, while your financial data will be unified, you’ll still have to track all of your booster club's other activities outside the platform. As a result, you’ll be using at least two or three different applications to manage your club. If that sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is. It’s no fun having to switch back and forth between systems, manage logins among several platforms and several volunteers, and keep all this information accessible for other board members and auditors.
More importantly, basic accounting software is designed for a single entity. If your athletic booster club manages the finances of multiple teams and groups, things can get messy in a hurry. The money for the football fundraiser is mixed with the money for the volleyball fundraiser. One parent wants to split a payment to two different sports. The funds raised under one sport were used by a coach for another sport, etc. Fortunately, there’s a better option that was built specifically for athletic booster clubs.
The Better Option: BoosterHub Pro
BoosterHub Pro was purpose-built with athletic booster clubs in mind. It boasts a streamlined accounting system that includes various built-in checks and balances so you can accurately track your finances and stay compliant with IRS requirements. You an assign permissions to allow various levels of access in the accounting system. You might have a treasurer and a co-treasurer with permission to make entries in accounting, for example. You might have a view-only level of access to other board members or auditors. BoosterHub also provides reminders for filing of taxes and other accounting deadlines. It has cash tally sheets, check requests, and other features to make accounting for your money efficient and able to be monitored. BoosterHub makes it easy to invoice under the Pay Later feature, and it has Payment Plan for designing tailored student account payments. The system was designed to handle an unlimited number of sports. So under one athletic booster club, you could manage football, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, lacrosse, swimming, cross country, and more!
As an added benefit, you can manage all of your other activities within the BoosterHub Pro platform. That’s right — you can communicate with parents and volunteers through email, chat, SMS, and announcements; you can create calendars, process payments, manage files, fundraise, sell tickets, manage inventory, and much more. You can even create a separate database for each team or group.
When you’re ready to revamp your athletic booster club’s accounting playbook, consider supporting your efforts with an innovative app. A solution like BoosterHub Pro will turn you into your club’s accounting MVP and help you avoid being caught out of bounds come tax time!
