Fintra for Nonprofits
Every dollar has strings: account for them
Why nonprofit books are harder than for-profit books
A nonprofit doesn’t just track how much money it has: it tracks what each dollar is allowed to do. Restricted grants, functional expense categories, and funder-specific reporting turn a small organization’s bookkeeping into real accounting work.
- Fund accounting: restricted and unrestricted balances must be tracked separately and never commingled.
- Grant restrictions: each grant has allowable costs, a period, and its own reporting deadline.
- Functional expense allocation: costs must split across program, admin, and fundraising defensibly.
- Board and 990 reporting: the statement of functional expenses must reconcile to the books, not to a spreadsheet.
How Fintra maps to nonprofit finance
- AI accounting carries fund and grant dimensions on every transaction, so restricted balances are always current.
- Functional allocations (salaries split across program, admin, and fundraising) run on documented bases in each close.
- Budgeting tracks budget-vs-actual per grant and per program, flagging overspend before a funder report does.
- Compliance in Fintra Trust keeps the audit trail that single audits and funder reviews expect.
A worked grant-tracking example
Program expense ratio
Program expenses ÷ total expenses = $1,500,000 ÷ $2,000,000 = 75%
Illustrative example: the ratio boards and watchdogs look at first, computed from allocated actuals rather than assembled by hand at 990 time.
Spreadsheet fund tracking vs Fintra
| Workflow | Spreadsheets + generic tools | Fintra |
|---|---|---|
| Restricted balances | A grants spreadsheet reconciled quarterly | Fund and grant dimensions on every transaction |
| Functional allocation | Year-end allocation exercise for the 990 | Documented allocation bases applied every close |
| Funder reports | Rebuilt per funder from exports | Per-grant budget-vs-actual on demand |
| Audit prep | Weeks of pulling support | Continuous audit trail via Fintra Trust |
Getting started
From a grants spreadsheet to true fund accounting
Set up funds and grants
Define restricted funds, grant budgets, periods, and allowable cost rules.
Define allocation bases
Document how shared costs split across program, admin, and fundraising.
Close monthly
Each close updates restricted balances and the statement of functional expenses.
Continuous controls for nonprofits.
Fintra tests every transaction, not a sample; only the items that fail open an exception; each exception carries a sealed record of what was checked; the record is mapped to the SOX 404 control it tests; an auditor reviews it through time-limited access.
| Control | How it is checked | Framework | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dual approval on disbursements | Tested continuously by the dual-approval test handler on every disbursement over threshold. | SOX-CA-02 · Dual approval | Tested today |
| Segregation of duties | Tested continuously by the segregation-of-duties handler: initiation and approval stay split. | SOX-CE-03 · SoD | Tested today |
| Grant / restricted-fund compliance | Rests on a signed attestation: a reviewer signs off restricted-fund and grant-spend compliance; no automated handler by design. | Attestation · reviewer sign-off | Attestation |
Only the controls marked tested today run against your real transactions now. Planned and attestation controls are listed so you can see the full scope; where Fintra cannot test something, it says so instead of reporting a pass. It works beside your GRC tool and your external audit, not instead of them.
How continuous testing worksQuestions people ask
Does Fintra support true fund accounting?
Yes. Every transaction carries fund and grant dimensions, so restricted and unrestricted balances are tracked in the ledger itself rather than in a side spreadsheet. Releases from restriction post as grant conditions are met, and the balance available in each fund is current at any moment.
Can Fintra track spending against individual grants?
Each grant gets its own budget, period, and allowable cost rules, and expenses charged to it accumulate against that budget in real time. A $250,000 grant with $100,000 spent shows a $150,000 remaining balance immediately, and overspend or ineligible-cost risks are flagged before the funder report is due.
How does Fintra handle functional expense allocation?
You define allocation bases (for example, salaries split by timesheet effort and occupancy split by square footage) and Fintra applies them in every monthly close. The statement of functional expenses for your board and Form 990 then reconciles to the books by construction, not by a year-end allocation scramble.
Does Fintra help with Form 990 and audit preparation?
Fintra doesn’t file the 990, but it produces the numbers the preparer needs: functional expenses, restricted fund activity, and program ratios straight from allocated actuals. The compliance module, part of Fintra Trust, maintains the audit trail, cutting audit fieldwork prep from weeks of document-pulling to routine review.
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Know every restricted balance, every day
Talk to us: we will map it to your stack. Set up your funds and grants and retire the tracking spreadsheet.