How to Manage VFD Finances with Trello (Part 3)
In the first two parts of this series, we covered how to use Trello to keep our leadership team organized and how to stay on top of facilities issues. In this final installment, we’ll dive into the most critical administrative function of any department: managing the money.
Relying on stray emails and paper receipts to manage your finances is a recipe for lost information, late payments, and a nightmare reconciliation process at the end of the month. We solved this by creating a robust system using three distinct Trello boards, each designed to handle a specific financial workflow.
This system ensures that every reimbursement request, invoice, and credit card receipt is tracked, approved, and filed in a consistent and transparent way.
Board 1: The Expense Reimbursement Workflow
This board is for when members spend their own money on department business and need to be reimbursed.
The Lists:
- Inbox
- Approved
- Paid
- Rejected
The Workflow: The process starts on our website with a custom “Expense Reimbursement” form built with WPForms, a popular and easy-to-use form builder plugin for WordPress. The form uses conditional logic (fields that appear or disappear based on previous answers) and lets the user select the appropriate officer for approval (e.g., for an operational vs. administrative expense).
When a member submits the form, two things happen automatically:
- WPForms saves a copy of the submission in its own database, creating an instant backup.
- It sends a formatted email to the Trello board’s unique email address, which creates a new card in the “Inbox” list. The email also CCs a distribution list of key officers.
To make processing easy, we added three Custom Fields to the cards on this board: “Payee,” “Budget Category,” and “Approved Payment Amount.” When an officer reviews a card in the “Inbox,” they fill out these fields so the bookkeeper knows exactly how to classify the expense.
We then use Trello’s Automations to create three one-click buttons on each card: “Approve,” “Reject,” and “Mark Paid.”
- Clicking Approve or Reject adds a comment to the card, assigns the approving officer to the card (so they get future notifications), and moves it to the corresponding list.
- Our treasurer knows to only issue payments for cards in the “Approved” list. Once the check is cut, they click the Mark Paid button, which again updates the comments and moves it to the “Paid” list for our records.
Board 2: The Invoice & Accounts Payable Workflow
This board is designed to process invoices that the department receives from vendors. The workflow is nearly identical to the reimbursement process.
The Lists:
- Inbox
- Approved
- Paid
- Rejected
The Workflow: Instead of a form, the input for this board is a simple email. We instructed our members that anyone who receives an invoice for the department should immediately forward it to a dedicated email address (e.g., invoices@yourvfd.org). That address, just like our others, forwards to the Trello board, automatically creating a card in the “Inbox.”
From there, the process is the same: an officer reviews the invoice, fills out the custom fields, and uses the “Approve” button to move it to the payment queue for the treasurer.
Board 3: The Receipt Submittal “Filing Cabinet”
This final board is simpler and serves a different purpose: to act as a central digital filing cabinet for all credit card receipts.
The Lists:
- Inbox
- Needs Review
- One list for each calendar month (e.g., “July 2025,” “August 2025,” etc.)
The Workflow: This board is also tied to a WPForms form on our website. We pre-populated the form with dropdown menus for authorized cardholders and budget categories to make it fast and easy to fill out.
When an officer submits a receipt, the form entry is saved in WPForms and an email is sent to this board, creating a card in the “Inbox.” There are no complex automations here. The goal is simply to have a single, searchable place for every credit card receipt.
The Result: Financial Sanity
By using these forms and workflows, we no longer have to rely on emails that are likely to get lost in the shuffle. But the benefits go far beyond simple organization. The system creates unparalleled transparency and a built-in audit trail; every approval and payment is time-stamped and logged on a card, so there’s never a question about the status of a transaction.
One of the most powerful features is Trello’s universal search. I can type a vendor’s name and instantly see every related card across all three boards—whether it was an invoice we paid or a receipt from a department credit card. This makes tracking spending incredibly simple. Plus, the entire system is accessible via the Trello mobile app, meaning an officer can approve an invoice from anywhere, a huge advantage for busy volunteers.
This all makes it a cinch for our treasurer and bookkeeper to classify transactions as they hit QuickBooks Online through our live bank feed and, most importantly, to reconcile our accounts at the end of the month with confidence and accuracy.
Wrapping Up The Series
And that concludes our three-part series on how we use Trello to help manage the business side of our VFD. We’ve covered how to create a “Command Board” to keep your leadership team organized, how to build an automated system for facilities management, and finally, how to streamline your financial workflows.
By leveraging this low-cost (and potentially free) tool, you can bring a new level of organization and efficiency to your operations. More importantly, you create the clear, consistent documentation and audit trails necessary to maintain transparency with your members, to be good stewards of donated funds, and to exercise good nonprofit management. This playbook will give you the confidence and the blueprint to start implementing these systems in your own department today.