Finance leaders at non-profits have a lot on their plate. From managing detailed financial reporting to maintaining compliance with ever-changing regulations, they play a critical role in keeping the organization financially healthy.
Sage Intacct is tailored to the nuanced needs of non-profit financial management, providing robust fund accounting capabilities, real-time financial reporting, and compliance solutions that make financial management more efficient and effective. By leveraging Sage Intacct, non-profit finance leaders can streamline operations, enhance financial transparency, and improve financial management.
This comprehensive guide outlines how Sage Intacct can help non-profit organizations streamline operations and optimize financial management processes. With a better understanding of Sage Intacct’s capabilities—and how finance teams can best leverage these powerful tools—organizations can focus less on complex administrative tasks and more on their overall mission.
Key takeaways
- Sage Intacct provides non-profits with tailored solutions to streamline processes, ensure compliance and transparency, and optimize financial management.
- Integrating AP automation with Sage Intacct helps simplify complexities, reduce costs, and improve accuracy, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of financial operations.
- By leveraging an automation tool with Sage Intacct, non-profits can further streamline accounts payable processes, significantly reducing manual tasks and allowing finance teams to focus on their core mission.
Challenges faced by non-profit organizations
Non-profits navigate a complex landscape of financial and operational challenges that can hinder their ability to effectively serve their mission, including:
1. Staffing and employee turnover
Non-profits are grappling with significant staffing and employee turnover challenges, with turnover rates that are far higher than other sectors. In fact, 45% of non-profit employees indicated that they will look for new job opportunities within the next five years. The non-profit sector has a 19% turnover rate, which is 7% above the national average. High turnover disrupts continuity and day-to-day operations and adds to financial strain due to repeated costs for recruitment and training.
Additionally, new AP employees may struggle to gain visibility into pending invoices if processes are paper-based. Vendors can be paid twice or late as a result, which can lead to strained relationships with key suppliers.
2. Visibility into cash flow
Many non-profitsstruggle with maintaining clear visibility into their cash flows, a crucial aspect of managing budgets, and funding. This lack of clarity can lead to poor financial decisions and difficulty in sustaining operations, especially when funding is unpredictable.
3. The accounting shortage
The challenge of hiring qualified accountants has intensified, with the U.S. facing a significant talent shortage as experienced professionals retire and fewer new CPAs enter the field. This accounting staff shortage places additional pressure on existing staff and increases the risk of turnover. Additionally, if these employees leave the organization, they are becoming increasingly difficult to replace.
4. Inflation
Inflation remains a persistent concern for CFOs and controllers, especially as non-profits often operate with limited resources and tight budgets. As high costs continue to erode purchasing power and increase operational expenses, non-profits must adapt to these economic changes without compromising their service delivery. That often entails finding more efficient ways to manage their finances.
6 key benefits of Sage Intacct for non-profits
Sage Intacct provides tailored solutions that address these non-profit-specific challenges effectively. The following are some of the key benefits Sage Intacct offers:
1. Dedicated grant management module
Sage Intacct’s dedicated grant management tools offer robust budget tracking, expenditure monitoring, and custom report generation tailored for grant writers. This functionality ensures meticulous oversight over hows funds are used, which is critical for meeting donor expectations and audit requirements. Additionally, the custom report generation feature simplifies the reporting process, making it easier to provide stakeholders with timely and detailed financial insights.
2. Fund accounting
Sage Intacct’s fund accounting capabilities facilitates meticulous tracking of funds and grants down to detailed dimensions such as fund, grant, and donor levels. This granularity enables precise management and enhanced accuracy of financial reports. Sage Intacct also automates revenue recognition associated with grants, reducing manual errors and increasing efficiency.
3. Multi-entity consolidation
The multi-entity consolidation features of Sage Intacct provide invaluable support for non-profits operating across multiple geographic locations or units within a larger organization. By consolidating financial results from both domestic and global operations into a single view, the platform enhances strategic decision-making and simplifies complex financial management tasks. This capability supports diverse organizational structures—especially for non-profits that operate both domestically and internationally—enabling more streamlined, error-free invoice workflows and financial processes across various entities.
4. Real-time reporting
Real-time reporting in Sage Intacct offers dynamic access to financial data through role-based reports, dashboards, and visualizations tailored specifically for non-profits, such as Sage Intacct’s built-in Board Dashboard. These tools provide crucial, timely insights that help non-profit stakeholders make informed decisions quickly. The availability of immediate data updates helps non-profit organizations react promptly to financial challenges and opportunities, supporting effective governance and operational management.
5. Access and permissions
Sage Intacct’s robust access management system ensures that employees and volunteers, regardless of their geographic locations, have appropriate access to financial systems and data. The centralized control safeguards sensitive information and maintains the integrity of financial data across dispersed teams. This flexibility in permissions also facilitates collaboration while enforcing necessary security measures to prevent unauthorized access.
6. Compliance
Compliance is a cornerstone of non-profit operations, and Sage Intacct helps ensure adherence to standards set by funding organizations and regulatory bodies such as the FASB and GASB. This compliance support is vital for maintaining the trust and confidence of donors, stakeholders, and the public. Through its comprehensive compliance tools, Sage Intacct helps non-profits navigate the complex landscape of financial regulations, ensuring they meet necessary guidelines and reporting requirements efficiently.
Combining AP automation with Sage Intacct
Accounts payable automation, or AP automation, refers to the use of technology to streamline and optimize the end-to-end AP process to better manage an organization’s payment operations. This technology automatically handles tasks such as invoice capture, coding invoices, routing invoices for approval, and streamlining payments, drastically reducing the need for manual intervention.
By implementing AP automation for Sage Intacct, non-profits can enhance accuracy, increase processing speed, and improve financial controls, leading to significant cost savings and operational efficiencies. Additionally, AP automation provides better visibility into cash flow and financial commitments, enabling more effective financial management and decision-making.
The benefits of integrating Sage Intacct with an AP automation tool
AP automation solutions for Sage Intacct reduce the complexity and cost of financial operations for non-profits. This integration not only simplifies the accounts payable process but also enhances the overall efficiency and effectiveness of financial management within organizations. Below are the top benefits of integrating Sage Intacct with AP automation.
1. Implement AP automation without high development costs
Sage Intacct integrates seamlessly with Sage Intacct compliant AP automation tools, allowing for easy and cost-effective adoption without the hefty price tag often associated with customizing an ERP system. This integration maintains Sage Intacct as the central system of record, streamlining AP processes and ensuring consistency and accuracy across financial data.
Did you know? MineralTree can be easily integrated with Sage Intacct using a direct API connection, so non-profits experience a seamless transition to AP automation.
2. Do more with less
Due to current staff turnover trends, non-profits may struggle to keep up with vast amounts of paperwork and high invoice volume. In fact, MineralTree’s 8th annual State of AP Report found nearly 6 in 10 organizations are concerned about the pressure to do more with less.
AP automation can help non-profits manage more invoices and payments with the same staffing levels. For those who have implemented AP automation, 58.4% are processing more invoices or payments with the same size team. This efficiency not only reduces the workload on existing staff but also allows them to focus on more strategic financial management tasks—enabling non-profits to do more with less and freeing up resources that can be redirected toward fulfilling their missions.
3. Multi-entity consolidation
AP automation from the right provider can be multi-entity aware for Sage Intacct, significantly aiding non-profits with complex structures or several geographic locations by simplifying the management of invoices and payments across multiple entities. This capability is essential for non-profit organizations concerned about the high volume of paperwork and potential errors due to staff turnover. Automation ensures consistent processes across all entities, reducing the administrative burden and improving overall financial accuracy.
4. Embrace more flexibility in terms of payment methods
Choosing the right AP automation solution helps automate all payments, whether paid via check, ACH, virtual card, or credit card. The AP check run is a particularly time consuming process and although most businesses are increasing their digital payment methods, very few organizations have replaced checks entirely.
With the right AP automation solution, teams can pay vendors based on their preferred method of payment from a single, automated workflow. Checks can be printed and sent automatically from the software. Finance teams can also pre-schedule payments so accounts payable can be more strategic with the funds the organization has.
Adding AP automation to Sage Intacct also allows non-profits to embrace a wider range of payment methods, including secure options like virtual cards. These methods not only streamline transactions but also provide opportunities for financial rebates, enhancing cash flow management and potentially lowering operational costs.
Did you know? American Express and Sage have recently announced that the integrated AMEX Card Payment Service will not be offered after the end of 2024. MineralTree supports American Express virtual card payments so that Sage Intacct users can continue to use their cards for secure payment processing.
Using a built-in virtual card solution such as SilverPay from MineralTree can provide additional security benefits for non-profits. MineralTree can help companies enroll strategic vendors into these digital format payments to improve cash flow and decrease fraud.
5. Improve the invoice approval process
Integrating an AP automation tool like MineralTree with Sage Intacct enhances the platform’s already robust role-based approval system, allowing for more efficient, tiered invoice approval processes. This integration ensures that approvals are managed more swiftly and effectively, reducing bottlenecks and improving the speed of financial transactions, which is crucial for maintaining operational momentum in non-profit settings.
Did you know? Although Sage Intacct offers role-based approvals, MineralTree can enhance this capability to add more detailed, distinguished tiers. MineralTree maintains separation of duties between the invoice approver and payment authorizer to help prevent fraud, making approvals easier.
6. Store documents digitally
Compliance is key for non-profits, making storing documents digitally essential. With digital AP document storage, non-profits can ensure that all financial documents are secure, easily accessible, and managed in compliance with relevant regulations.
Did you know? MineralTree offers unlimited document storage, ensuring easy access and compliance.
7. Improve financial planning
Typically, teams have to wait for invoices to be posted to the ERP to access and use payment data. With AP automation, invoices are posted immediately, allowing teams to access real-time data. Faster access to this data also lets teams more accurately forecast the impact of accounts payable. This enhancement makes financial planning more responsive and dynamic, enabling quicker adjustments to financial strategies and better alignment with organizational goals and cash flow requirements.
8. Transform the back-office so it’s self-funded
With AP automation, non-profits can unlock significant cost savings, which can be redirected to fund other operations, transforming the back office into a self-funding entity. By optimizing payment processes and unlocking new revenue streams, such as cutting back on checks and enrolling more vendors in virtual cards to gain rebates, organizations can turn routine financial operations into revenue-generating activities. For instance, The Appalachian Mountain Club, the nation’s oldest outdoor and recreation and conservation organization leveraged MineralTree’s SilverPay virtual card to earn thousands of dollars in rebates on an annual basis. These rebates have covered 30% of the annual cost of MineralTree.
Did you know? MineralTree has a team of experts available to help enroll your most strategic vendors in virtual card payments, so you can take advantage of rebates.
Case study: Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma reduces manual processes
The Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma distributes millions of pounds of food annually across 24 counties in the state. With a small finance team supported by only one staff accountant, the organization was bogged down by manual processes, such as manual bill entries, tracking lost bills, and handling vendor calls. Invoice approvals were also done on paper, causing additional delays and errors.
The food bank needed a solution to streamline processes, reduce manual work, and maximize the productivity of its finance team. The integration of MineralTree with Sage Intacct automated the entire accounts payable process from invoice entry to payment scheduling. This shift not only significantly reduced the time spent on manual tasks but also enhanced the accuracy and reliability of financial data—crucial for an organization dependent on accurate reporting for funding and operational decision-making.
Final thoughts
Sage Intacct provides non-profit organizations with powerful tools to optimize their financial operations. Integrating end-to-end AP automation further enhances the power of Sage Intacct, streamlining processes, improving efficiency in finance, and empowering non-profits to allocate more resources towards their core missions.
For organizations looking to transform their financial management and harness the benefits of advanced AP automation, MineralTree offers a robust solution that integrates effortlessly with Sage Intacct.
Learn how MineralTree’s integrated solutions with Sage Intacct can transform your organization’s financial operations.
AP automation for non-profits FAQs
1. What is non-profit accounting?
Non-profit accounting involves tracking, managing, and reporting financial data for organizations that don’t operate for profit. It includes specific practices like fund accounting and grant management.
2. What steps are involved in setting up an accounting system for a non-profit?
Setting up a non-profit accounting system involves choosing the right software, configuring fund and grant tracking, establishing compliance measures, and training staff on the software.
3. What kind of accounting do non-profits use?
Non-profits primarily use fund accounting to manage and report on funds that have been designated for specific purposes by donors.
4. Should non-profits use cash or accrual accounting?
It’s recommended that non-profits use accrual accounting as it provides a more accurate picture of their financial position and activities, especially when dealing with grants and donations.
