[Quiz] Is your nonprofit accounting software holding you back?

Accounting systems are not something that busy nonprofit organizations change or replace often. However, as your organization grows in size or complexity, it may reach a point where manual processes become a huge drain on productivity—and an obstacle to visibility. When you’re in the weeds performing manual tasks like data imports and exports, reconciliations, and anomaly investigation, it becomes an ongoing struggle to analyze critical financial and operating data. That’s when you know your organization needs a modern nonprofit accounting software solution that leverages new technology.

Is your current system holding you back? Take a few minutes now to evaluate your current nonprofit accounting software needs by taking our quiz below. After taking the quiz, we invite you to download our handy software buyer’s checklist to help you evaluate nonprofit accounting software vendors and ensure you get the modern features you need to improve efficiency and get data-driven insights faster.

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Download the Nonprofit Accounting Software Buyer’s Checklist

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Take the quiz

1. Does your nonprofit manage restricted grants and funds?   Yes / No

If your nonprofit receives restricted funds or relies on grants to fund various operations, it’s important to understand and comply with any requirements associated with those funds. Plus, your major donors expect to receive reports from your organization to track fund usage and measure impact. Good stewardship of funds requires transparency and accountability, creating a need for system-wide tracking and visibility across key segments or identifiers.

Sage Intacct provides instantly customizable dashboards that give you real-time operation and financial visibility by fund. Plus, you’ll have the ability to slice and dice your financial information any way you want, leverage operating dimensions to get a holistic view of performance and outcome measures, and report quickly and easily on key attributes whether it is a fund, grant, or program.

2. Do you have to perform manual calculations in external spreadsheets for revenue recognition?   Yes / No

Many nonprofit organizations are still exporting sales data to Excel or manually completing billing worksheets in order to manage revenue recognition. That process is error-prone and takes significant time away from strategic activities. With Sage Intacct, nonprofit finance leaders can automate revenue management and automatically calculate revenue recognition using real-time data from CRM and labor-tracking systems.

Sage Intacct allows you to decouple your fund invoicing schedule from revenue recognition, enabling you to efficiently and accurately manage complex schedules. Plus, Sage Intacct is the only nonprofit revenue recognition solution to streamline ASV 2018-08 and ASC 606 compliance for nonprofits so you can easily manage funding across accounting periods.

3. Does your nonprofit have multiple entities or multiple locations?   Yes / No

If your organization has multiple legal entities or locations, performing consolidations quickly isn’t easy—and the time spent performing these tasks manually often snowballs into lengthy close times. That’s why organizations need nonprofit accounting software equipped to handle the complexities of multi-entity management by allowing you to drill down into detailed consolidating entries; create multiple levels in your organization hierarchy; and choose consistent or different workflows, charts of accounts, period definitions, and lists across your multiple entries. Sage Intacct provides the flexibility to maintain multiple ledgers that can process transactions independently without degrading GL performance.

4. Does your accounting software provide multiple operating dimensions for all transactions to provide in-depth, real-time financial insight?   Yes / No

Nonprofits need timely, insightful financial reporting to make mission-critical decisions to propel their mission forward. That’s what makes spreadsheet-based reporting so frustrating. It’s time-consuming and doesn’t always offer the level of detail you need to see a clear picture of financial performance.

Sage Intacct emboldens nonprofit finance leaders to use real-time dynamic reports and dashboards that automatically combine operating dimensions with financial data so you can analyze results for each operating unit, location, project, funder, and more. Plus, you’ll have drill down capabilities for visibility and insight into the numbers and flexible reporting tools that help you easily manage changing budget and compliance requirements.

5. Does your nonprofit organization struggle with increasing IT costs and technology risks?   Yes / No

Older on-premises accounting systems are often expensive to own and lack the specialized functionality needed for your nonprofit to meet its goals. Choosing a cloud-based nonprofit accounting software solution changes all that. Cloud solutions are easy to use and more affordable since there is no IT infrastructure to maintain. You don’t need to perform software updates and cloud solutions are highly scalable to grow with your organization.

6. Can staff access your system from anywhere, at any time?   Yes / No

A true cloud solution enables your staff to shift seamlessly from working at the office to working at home or any other location—while maintaining peace of mind that their data is safe and secure in the cloud. That kind of flexibility helps nonprofits recruit and retain better talent. It also increases organizational agility in the event of unusual circumstances, such as a global pandemic or regional natural disaster.

7. Does your organization leverage other best-in-class solutions to manage payroll, budgeting, and CRM?   Yes / No

When you’re busy trying to drive your mission forward, you need the flexibility to choose best-in-class solutions to manage different areas of your organization—whether it’s payroll, donor management, budgeting, or CRM solutions like Salesforce. Sage Intacct offers convenient “point-and-click” integrations through our open API that don’t require IT skills. This means you can leverage key data from those third-party business applications to track metrics central to your operations and programs in one place.

8. Do your nonprofit audits take too long and cost too much?   Yes / No

Costly audits are often the result of auditors having to search and dig to find the financial information they need to complete their work. Having a cloud-based nonprofit accounting software can help you collaborate more effectively with your auditor. For example, you can provide Sage Intacct access to your auditor with read-only access to transaction details and self-service reports. This allows the auditor to be able to start working before your financial close and have the ability to drill down into details for clarification.

9. Is your nonprofit accounting software designed for the unique needs of your nonprofit?   Yes / No

Your nonprofit organization strives to strengthen stewardship, build influence, grow funding, and achieve mission success. It’s important to choose nonprofit accounting software designed to support continuous improvement. Features such as role-based access, workflow customizations, and point-and-click API integrations help your organization optimize efficiency based on your unique operational model.

10. Is your solution trusted by other nonprofits and recognized for excellence?   Yes / No

In addition to having the right features for nonprofits, it helps to choose a solution that’s already trusted by many other nonprofits and recognized by industry leaders. An innovative leader in the cloud financial management and accounting space for more than two decades, Sage Intacct is the first and only AICPA preferred provider of financial management solutions. Plus, Sage Intacct consistently earns top ratings and reviews by customers from trusted independent sources like G2 and Trust Radius.

Conclusion

At a minimum, a modern accounting system for nonprofits should automate and streamline core financial management functions such as Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and Financial Close. But that really is the bare minimum. In fact, Sage Intacct has identified more than 40 must-have features nonprofits need to successfully drive mission success.

Is your current nonprofit accounting software holding you back? If you answered yes to any of the questions above, it’s time for your organization to make the move to modern cloud nonprofit accounting software. To help you evaluate nonprofit accounting software vendors and ensure you get the modern features you need, we invite you to download the Nonprofit Accounting Software Buyer’s Checklist.