Preparing a nonprofit organization for its first single audit

The organization had crossed the single audit threshold for the first time. Restricted funding tracking, Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA) preparation, and coordination between program and finance staff were heavily manual. Grant reporting varied by program and by preparer, program activity was not consistently tied to the underlying financial reporting, and the leadership team was carrying real anxiety into board conversations about whether the organization was ready for the audit.

We stood up structured grant reporting workflows with consistent templates across all federal awards, aligned SEFA preparation to a recurring reconciliation cadence so the schedule was built continuously rather than reconstructed at year-end, and connected program activity to financial reporting so program managers and finance saw the same numbers. Documentation was organized to match how auditors would request it, not how the organization had historically stored it.

SEFA preparation moved from more than five days of dedicated effort to under one day. Grant reporting became standardized across programs. The organization completed its first single audit with zero findings. Audit prep became a planning rhythm the board could see, not a source of quiet anxiety.