How to Transform Your Nonprofit Financial Management

Transforming your nonprofit’s financial management isn’t about finance or technology. It’s about your mission. It’s about using resources most effectively so that your organization can achieve the greatest impact.

The ability to analyze your financial and outcome data is critical to maximizing your impact. You need to be able to see what’s happening across your organization in real time.

Does this sound like an impossible dream? It’s not, thanks to modern cloud financial management software.

Why Nonprofits Need Digital Finance Transformation

If your office is still relying on Excel or QuickBooks for reporting and analysis, you risk missing key insights that could help your organization make better use of resources and maximize your impact.

Nonprofit finance transformation uses technology to enhance:

• Automation

• Reporting

• Connectivity

• Visibility

• Collaboration

This helps nonprofits become more strategic when it comes to analysis, planning, and making decisions. Just because your organization isn’t driven by the bottom line doesn’t mean that you don’t have complex financial and logistical needs.

Automation is key to your nonprofit finance transformation. It’s about gaining value by investing in technology. What this means in practical terms for your organization will depend upon your needs. It might mean using technology to reduce costs, expand without increasing your headcount, or reducing the amount of time needed to close the books and generate reports. Automation helps you deliver higher value by using your resources more strategically.

Quick and Easy Reporting

Reporting often requires a lot of tedious, manual data entry. It also takes up too much time. In a survey by Sage Intacct, more than 40% of nonprofit finance teams said that they were frustrated by manual reporting.  Almost half of organizations said they spent more than 25 hours per month on reporting, while one in five nonprofits spent 40+ hours monthly on reporting.

All that time adds up. It’s a drag on your staff and resources. Modern, best-in-class financial management software provides automated reporting with point and click filtering. They deliver real-time insight for better decision making. Automation allows you to take the time that you’re currently using for manual reporting, and instead spend it analyzing trends and applying insights to support your mission.

A lack of real-time visibility hurts your organization. The inability to see current key outcomes and performance metrics delays decision making, increases risks, and can lead to missed opportunities. Transforming your nonprofit’s financial management will give you the ability to see key performance indicators in real-time.

Outcomes, performance, and impact matter to your donors, staff, constituents, clients, and board members. It’s crucial to securing funding and remain compliant with grant requirements. It helps you tell the story of your mission impact to constituents.

Improved Productivity

Nonprofit ERP software improves connectivity and removes gaps in visibility. It eliminates the data silos that hamper visibility and impede decision-making. This reduces or eliminates the need for duplicate work, improving productivity.

Nonprofit financial management software also offers better data connectively than legacy software solutions. Enjoy easy integration between your financial, billing, donor/grant management, case management, and other systems. Without that easy integration, it can become difficult or impossible to easily compile timely and accurate reporting.

Greater Mission Impact

All this is in service of your mission. The goal of nonprofit finance transformation is to harness the power of technology to deliver value. You’ll be able to provide your constituents and donors with greater visibility, which improves transparency and trust.

Nonprofit finance transformation includes functionality and processes that improve communication between the finance team and the board, managers, stakeholders, and auditors.

Sage Intacct is the #1 cloud nonprofit accounting software. It offers accounts payable automation, comprehensive grant track and billing, automated nonprofit revenue recognition, an audit trail, and more.