How to make PTA Financial Reports

Making financial reports may seem like a daunting task for new PTA / PTO Treasurers. Fear not! This article will show you how to make your monthly Financial Reports quickly and easily using two methods! We will go over the different parts of a Financial Report, show you a sample Financial Report, then walk you through creating your own Financial report.

Note: I use the term PTA, but keep in mind that this article also pertains to PTOs!

What is a Financial Report?

A financial report shows stakeholders the financial health of your PTA. It sums up all the things that your PTA has been spending money on, how your PTA received money like donations, and how all that relates to your budget.

Financial reports will cover a specific time period. PTA Treasurers have to go over the financial report in every general membership meeting, executive board meetings, and as required by the board. Financial reports usually cover the past month and will also include year to date totals. Let's look at a sample Financial Report to see this more clearly.

Financial Report Example

This Financial Report was created using Treasoro, but we will get to that later.

There are 5 columns in this report. The first column is Selected Period. The values in this column represent amounts from the selected period shown at the top of the report. The next column is Year To Date which includes amounts calculated from the start of your fiscal year.

Fiscal Years don’t always start at the beginning of the calendar year. PTAs may choose to have their fiscal year start in August before school starts. This will be stated in your PTA Bylaws.

The next column is the Approved Budget Column. The items on the left will match your budget and are all the line items from that budget. So this column will list the same amounts from your approved budget.

The Proposed Amendments column will list any proposed amendments or changes to your budget for this period. If there are amounts in this column, then they will be voted on by your executive board then by your general membership. This may be different if your organization is a PTO. Check your bylaws to make sure.

The last column is the Amended budget and will equal your Approved Budget amounts after adjusting for the Proposed Amendments. This will give viewers an idea of what the budget will like after the amendments have been approved.

Creating your Financial Report

Start with a simple template like the example above. The first row of your report will be the Cash Balance Forward row. Use these amounts:

• Selected Period - This is what your bank balance was at the beginning of the selected period.
• Year to Date - This is what your bank balance was at the beginning of your fiscal year.
• Approved Budget - This is the Cash Balance Forward from your approved budget
• Amended Budget - This is the same amount as the Cash Balance Forward from your approved budget.

Next, we need to list all the receipts from your budget. Copy the amounts from your approved budget to the Approved Budget column.

We need to calculate the amounts for these line items for the Selected Period column. To do this we can use our bank statement. All transactions from your bank statement should relate to a line item from your budget. Add up all the transactions for each line item and put the amounts in the Selected Period column for the related line items. This will be the same process for the Year To Date column but we are going to add up all the transactions since the beginning of your fiscal year. To save you some time, you can use the Year To Date amounts from the last financial report and adjust that amount by the Selected period for each line item.

Now we need to list all of our expenses. The process will be the exact same as calculating the receipts amounts for the different columns demonstrated above.

Next, list the amounts of any proposed amendments to their respective line items in the Proposed Amendments column. If a line item doesn’t have any proposed amendments, then simply put a 0 in this column for that line item.

Finally, calculate the budget line items after the proposed amendments and enter those values in the Amended Budget column.

Calculate the total receipts and total expenses by adding all the amounts for each respective line item type for each column of the financial report.

Next, calculate the net Receipts by subtracting the total expenses from the total receipts for each column.

To calculate the Cash Balance Forward at the end of the report (I call it the ending balance), add the Net Receipts to the Beginning Balance for each column. The Cash balance forward for the Proposed Amendments column will be the same as the net receipts.

PTAs only have two liability accounts: Sales Tax Payable and State and National Dues Payable. PTOs may be different. Check your bylaws. If there has been a change in these amounts then you note the amounts here for both Selected Period and Year to Date. These would be if your dues have increased or if you sold items and collected sales tax. If neither of these are the case, then enter zeros for the amounts.

To calculate the Adjusted Cash Balance Forward, take the Cash Balance Forward at the bottom of the sheet and subtract the Tax Payable and State and National Dues Payable amounts and put the result in the Adjusted Cash Balance Forward for each column: Selected Period and Year to Date.

Congratulations! You successfully completed creating a Financial Report! To be honest, that is a lot of work that you will have to do every month. This can become a tedious process for any PTA Treasurer. And because it is tedious it becomes error prone.

Luckily, there is an easier way!

Financial Software

You can save a lot of time by using software to perform the calculations for you. This software can range from using a spreadsheet to full-blown accounting software. Treasury can help you create your financial reports in just a few clicks!

Treasoro starts out by making you enter in your budget information. Your budget tells Treasoro all the line items that you will have budgeted for your organization.

Next you will need to either link your bank account to Treasoro or manually add your bank information and create transactions. Once your bank account transactions are in Treasoro, you can link those transactions to budget line items!

This will allow Treasoro to automatically calculate your Financial Report for you. All you have to do is remember to link any new transactions to your budget line items.

Get started with Treasoro for free today!

If you would like to see how Treasoro can help your PTA / PTO by using Treasoro, then there is no better time to start than right now. Start Treasoro now and use it for free for 30 days.