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Let’s face it -- accounting information is almost completely useless unless you have the reporting tools to help you measure what really matters to your non-profit organization. This applies to all non-profits; from educational institutions, faith-based and ministry organizations, to health and human services agencies. How can the executive directors or management possibly understand the complexity of their overall operations and make sound decisions without good reporting?

We are in an age of increasing demand for transparency/accountability and are looking for ways to generate and demonstrate successful outcomes. We must have simple, easy to understand metrics that can quickly take the pulse of an organization and assist with decision-making.  We must have metrics reporting that never loses focus on what is important and what truly matters to management and stakeholders.

A modern, non-profit accounting solution will consistently track your data by key components and give you instant insight, empowering you to proactively manage funding, programs, students, members, and more. These systems can provide access to both financial and statistical data that allow you to automatically calculate key metrics to measure what matters. These metrics can report on critical information such as financial (revenue), statistical (students), or any number of combinations (donations per attendee).  Sage Intacct is such a software solution that was designed to provide real-time visibility into all components of your organization. 

As management of a non-profit organization, consider the potential immediate and long-term value to your organization of real-time & accurate reporting. Think about the benefits of being able to easily generate and clearly demonstrate successful outcomes to all stakeholders including funders, board members, or donors. How could you improve the health of your organization by having real-time visibility into funding, programs, donations, expenses and more?

Spending less than you bring in is often cited as the most important non-profit finance goal. It helps you stay out of debt, save for emergencies and stash money away for future projects. It is the primary control that enables you to achieve some level of financial long-term stability. Many governments seem to forget this very basic fact. They don’t think that financial dead ends like what has happened in Greece can happen to them. Non-profits don’t have the luxury of continuous deficit spending; therefore, budgeting is essential to meet the objective of the organization. Budgets are simply the roadmaps to achieve strategic non-profit goals.

But, how do we make this whole process easier? How do we reduce the 5 major budgeting issues?

1. Reducing the decentralized data and department silos of information
2. Controlling the preparation process, multiple revisions and related backup information
3. Reducing the time to prepare the budgets (complete process can take more than 3 months to complete and approve)
4. Improving the accuracy of the information with consistent documentation
5. Improving the timeliness of the budget (Produce the budgets frequently enough to help decision making to help focus on strategic goals)

The answer to these questions is through using technology effectively in our organizations. Spreadsheets are not automation. Let’s get real and understand that they are only a tool. There are solutions available that can take the prior history from your accounting system and send it to the appropriate department manager. The information is in a format that they can use to easily create a new budget. This budget has all the related documentation available and linked to details for the budget information. The budget can then be rolled up into other levels, like divisions and organizations. With this setup, changes are easy to make, all being tracked and the approved budget can be quickly linked with your accounting system to provide timely reporting and improved decision making. These budgeting and planning systems can solve all the major budgeting issues and are very inexpensive to implement within organizations.  (For more info Click Here)

So, let’s get real and understand that the current budget processes are a pain and result in significant amounts of wasted time and effort. Let’s use the existing technology, accounting and management processes to make our budgeting less stressful.