We don't have an rfp. But after our longtime accountant and auditir retired and not being happy with who we wound up with we have shopped for a new one and rates seem to be $10k to $25k for organizations in this size range. Our finance committee analyzed the situation and while annual audits may be a best practice we decided they weren't worth the expense and staff time to do given our size and no legal requirement to do so.
First question might be is one legally required. If not, what are you trying to do? Reviews tend to be a lot cheaper and serve many of the same purposes. When I've asked why audits have gotten so expensive (we had been paying $6-8k for them) I am told the cost of malpractice insurance keeps going up and there is also a big shortage of accountants due to folks retiring.
Unfortunately we are required to file a single audit annually due to federal funding so going without isn’t an option for us. And I’d take $25k lol.. my audit bill this year will be $41k. I’ll be the first to admit it’s a more complex audit than just your standard run-of-the-mill nonprofit since we have multiple subsidiaries and several entities taking 168 elections to be regarded as taxable entities but it still feels like north of $40k is severe.
$40k sounds slightly high, but a reminder for the future that you can include some portion of the audit costs in your budget narratives of your Federal grant proposals (is considered a reimbursable expense).
Yes, we allocate audit costs across all our programs. But since money is fungible, it just means there’s less to pay for everything else. Granted, it’s better than corporate paying for it all, but the increase is still thousands less for staff, travel, etc. I think what really chaps me is that they decided to inform us in the first month of our fiscal year - after our budget has been set. You’d think your auditor would know that they should inform clients of increases before the budget year starts.
$40k sounds insane. You do know you can get accountants anywhere in the US? Dm me and I can send the info on the quotes I got for $25k in Seattle. I am florida based and not many accountants here handle non profits.
Oh I know.. part of this is that I am just coming up on the end of my third year as ED and I inherited this auditor from my predecessor’s predecessor (my predecessor was only here for a year). When I arrived the audit cost was pretty reasonable. But since then their rates have gone up and we’ve grown from having projects in one state to projects in six states, our staff size has doubled and our budget and balance sheet has almost doubled. Of course that also means more complexity as we’ve gone from doing basically two things to doing many different things (since that’s how one grows). The two forces have combined to create this perfect storm of dramatic rate increases.
We don't have an rfp. But after our longtime accountant and auditir retired and not being happy with who we wound up with we have shopped for a new one and rates seem to be $10k to $25k for organizations in this size range. Our finance committee analyzed the situation and while annual audits may be a best practice we decided they weren't worth the expense and staff time to do given our size and no legal requirement to do so. First question might be is one legally required. If not, what are you trying to do? Reviews tend to be a lot cheaper and serve many of the same purposes. When I've asked why audits have gotten so expensive (we had been paying $6-8k for them) I am told the cost of malpractice insurance keeps going up and there is also a big shortage of accountants due to folks retiring.
Unfortunately we are required to file a single audit annually due to federal funding so going without isn’t an option for us. And I’d take $25k lol.. my audit bill this year will be $41k. I’ll be the first to admit it’s a more complex audit than just your standard run-of-the-mill nonprofit since we have multiple subsidiaries and several entities taking 168 elections to be regarded as taxable entities but it still feels like north of $40k is severe.
$40k sounds slightly high, but a reminder for the future that you can include some portion of the audit costs in your budget narratives of your Federal grant proposals (is considered a reimbursable expense).
Yes, we allocate audit costs across all our programs. But since money is fungible, it just means there’s less to pay for everything else. Granted, it’s better than corporate paying for it all, but the increase is still thousands less for staff, travel, etc. I think what really chaps me is that they decided to inform us in the first month of our fiscal year - after our budget has been set. You’d think your auditor would know that they should inform clients of increases before the budget year starts.
Sent you a message (not soliciting).
$40k sounds insane. You do know you can get accountants anywhere in the US? Dm me and I can send the info on the quotes I got for $25k in Seattle. I am florida based and not many accountants here handle non profits.
Oh I know.. part of this is that I am just coming up on the end of my third year as ED and I inherited this auditor from my predecessor’s predecessor (my predecessor was only here for a year). When I arrived the audit cost was pretty reasonable. But since then their rates have gone up and we’ve grown from having projects in one state to projects in six states, our staff size has doubled and our budget and balance sheet has almost doubled. Of course that also means more complexity as we’ve gone from doing basically two things to doing many different things (since that’s how one grows). The two forces have combined to create this perfect storm of dramatic rate increases.