ANCOR News - 10.10.17

5 Signs that your Finance & HR System is Failing your Agency

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As a nonprofit agency, you’re looking to put every dollar towards your mission. So, it’s likely that when you were first starting out you chose a finance solution that wasn’t too costly or complicated and fit your basic needs. But as your organization grows, tools such as Accpac or Quickbooks may no longer be robust enough to handle the increasing complexity of your budget management or reporting requirements. If you’re still using one of these smaller finance and accounting systems, take a second to ask yourself these questions:

  1. Are you pulling your hair out having to check and recheck numbers on multiple spreadsheets?
  2. Are you always chasing paper because of paper-based approval processes?
  3. Are you struggling to allocate or split expenses between multiple departments?
  4. Is your system interface difficult to navigate or not intuitive enough for your users?
  5. Is integrating Accpac or Quickbooks with your other systems becoming an increasing challenge?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then keep reading.

First of all, we don’t blame you for starting off with Accpac or Quickbooks. It was easy enough to use and helped you manage your operations and finances. It was great when you were just a small organization, but now you’ve grown and are finding it difficult to manage a large, complicated GL structure or find real-time information on your budget availability.

Don’t worry, we hear you, and we have a solution to all of the challenges listed above:

Challenge #1: Having to check and recheck numbers on multiple spreadsheets.

Solution: We offer a robust Finance, Accounting, HR, and Payroll system all contained within a single solution. This means you no longer need to import or export data from one solution to another because our software automates checks and balances for budget control and offers automatic dual integration to save you from having to dump data into and out of Excel.

Challenge #2: Paper-based approval processes.

Solution: Automated requisition processes built within workflows ensure that the right people can easily and electronically be notified of and approve submitted procurement requests.

Challenge #3: Allocating or splitting expenses between multiple departments.

Solution: Because the Sparkrock solution uses dimension combinations, instead of simply segmented accounts, it’s easy to allocate funding to multiple departments or programs for easy reporting. The solution also allows for built in validations and quick codes to easily populate all of the dimensions.

Challenge #4: A user interface that is not intuitive or is difficult to navigate.

Solution: A role-based interface makes sure no one has to sift through more info than they need to. Interfaces can be tailored to specific roles – such as an accounting manager, a payroll manager, an executive, and more. These interfaces can also then be personalized individually.

Challenge #5: Not being able to look at the your finances or operations as a whole because your data is housed in multiple systems.

Solution: Our integrated system can seamlessly handle everything from GL to HR to Payroll, eliminating the need for multiple systems. Plus, our system has been strategically developed to cater to the specific needs of Human Services agencies.

If your organization is struggling with any of the challenges above, it might be time to consider upgrading your system to one that can handle the complex allocations and reporting that your funders require. It’s amazing that your mission is growing to help more people, but you also need to help yourself by ensuring you have a system in place that can handing your increasingly complex needs.

If you’d like to know more about switching from Accpac or Quickbooks to Sparkrock, check out this case study from our friends at Action Group who switched to our solution and couldn’t be happier, or reach out to us and we can chat more about how switching solutions can vastly improve your processes or set up a demo so you can see the solution in action.