Learning objective: Recognize patterns in financial reports that point to errors, fraud, theft, or other financial risks, and the controls that help prevent them.

Most problems in a small program’s books are honest mistakes: a bill entered twice, a payment applied to the wrong family, a receipt that never made it to the bookkeeper. Occasionally they are not. Either way, the director is usually the person best placed to notice, because the director knows what happened in the building that month.

You do not need to be an accountant to spot a problem. You need to know what normal looks like and notice when a number does not fit.