CFO Shenanigans 

Your bookkeeper balances the books. That matters. A lot. But who is helping you understand what the numbers mean, what could go wrong next, and where your organization should go from here? If your finance meeting usually sounds like, “The report is ready, but I’m not sure what we’re looking at,” you are not alone. Many mission-driven organizations have accurate records but still lack financial direction. Your bookkeeper, fee accountant, or accounting team records transactions

What if your organization’s real New Year arrived in two weeks: and you were still planning around January? As of mid-September, October 1 is approaching fast. For HUD-funded organizations and public housing authorities, the federal fiscal year is about to turn over, bringing new funding assumptions, Annual Contributions Contract activity, capital planning decisions, reporting expectations, and compliance priorities. Meanwhile, your team may still be squinting at last year’s

You can feel it in the room. The pause before a board member asks a question you cannot fully answer. The polite nod that really means, “We’ll circle back.” The sudden interest in a report everyone received five minutes before the meeting. Fall board season has a way of turning financial reporting problems into very visible problems. Your board may not distrust you, but they may distrust numbers they cannot verify, understand, or connect to the mission. That distinction matte

“We’re not big enough for a CFO.” You may have said it during a budget meeting, a board conversation, or while staring at a bank balance that looked healthy until the next round of payroll, vendor bills, and grant expenses came due. We have a bookkeeper. We use accounting software. We can figure this out. That thinking is common among mission-driven organizations with annual revenue between $750,000 and $5 million. It is also where financial problems often begin. At this stag

September is the most expensive month to do nothing. If your public housing authority reaches September 30 with unreconciled accounts, missing invoices, and unanswered questions, October will not magically solve the problem. It will simply bring a rush job, late adjustments, audit stress, and possibly re-filings. “We’ll let the auditor handle it” sounds practical: until the auditor finds that the books were never truly closed. A clean year-end starts before the fiscal year en

It’s late August, which means budget season has arrived: and somewhere, a leadership team is staring at a spreadsheet thinking, “If we just increase revenue by 8%, this will work.” Maybe. But let’s be real: many 2027 budgets are written backward. They begin with what the organization hopes to receive, then force staffing, programs, capital needs, and operating costs into whatever space remains. By the time the board approves the plan, it may look polished: but it is already d