How Automation Can Help Nonprofits
Many nonprofits spend years relying on manual data entry, spreadsheets, and basic financial tools like QuickBooks. Why? Because those processes work…at least at first.
As your organization grows, you might find that the time you’re spending on repetitive manual tasks is growing too, with month-end closes growing longer and longer, until they seem to take up most of the month. All those tedious, time-consuming activities can lead to a dash to the finish line that causes oversights and errors.
To address these challenges, many nonprofits are moving to Sage Intacct and other cloud ERP solutions that automate key processes, including close management, saving time and improving accuracy.
Spend More Time on What Matters
The primary benefit of automation is that it saves time—often hours and hours of time every month. When you fully automate your month-end close, for instance, you basically move into a perpetual state of close, so there’s no months-end rush where you’re digging through data and struggling to reconcile budgets.
Organizations that automate can take the hours employees formerly spent on mind-numbing manual tasks and instead devote them to bigger-picture, more intellectually demanding activities. That means more time developing and executing new strategies, cultivating donors, improving marketing, and performing other mission-focused work.
The Right Numbers Every Time
Another challenge with manual processes is that they are inherently error-prone. Even the most diligent of employees will make the occasional mistake, which can lead to hours or days of confusion. Worst of all, if data entry or other errors aren’t caught right away, they might be seen by donors and board members, which can do real damage to your nonprofit’s reputation.
By streamlining and automating data flow and reconciliation steps, you can reduce the risk of human error and gain more confidence in the integrity of your processes. And you can still maintain control over your automated processes—updating and fine-tuning as needed to address changing requirements.
Time to Automate?
Insero & Co. can help you decide whether it’s time to automate your processes and, if so, how to make the shift as seamlessly as possible using best-in-class software. Our team has decades of experience helping hundreds of nonprofits through these and other challenges. Contact us to talk about the relationship-based services we provide and how they might help save you time every month.
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About the Author: Kimberly Gangi
