4 Reasons Why Non-profits Need Sage Intacct

Nonprofit organizations face unique challenges that demand tailored solutions to address their nuanced needs, like juggling limited resources, navigating complex regulations, and nurturing stakeholder relationships all while striving to make a lasting impact. Running a successful nonprofit is not easy, especially with 71% of nonprofits having seen an increase in demand for their programs and services. This dynamic industry requires a comprehensive Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that can handle these pressures, so finance teams spend less time buried in spreadsheets and more time focused on the overall mission.

If you’re a finance leader in the nonprofit sector who wants to continue doing things the hard way your way, you can stop here. If, on the other hand, you’re curious how other nonprofits have transformed their financial management with Sage Intacct, keep reading…

1. Grant Management

We all know that effective grant management is critical to keeping a non-profit financially healthy. Sage Intacct’s accounting software for nonprofits provides dedicated grant management tools within a single source of truth to easily monitor your revenue, spending, and budget related to grant activities.

97% of nonprofits have budgets of less than $5 million annually, 92% operate with less than $1 million a year, and 88% spend less than $500,000 annually for their work. No matter what budget you have, every dollar you receive is hard-earned and deeply valued, so we understand that you need to use it as effectively as possible. With Sage Intacct, you can capture accurate costs for reimbursement with precision. You won’t be scrambling around for receipts at the last minute wondering if expenses were recorded accurately. Sage Intacct does this heavy lifting by automatically recording and tracking costs all within one platform.

By simplifying and streamlining regulatory compliance requirements, you get more time to focus on achieving goals instead of slogging your way through government red tape. Sage Intacct’s strong preventive controls are embedded into workflows to keep you effortlessly aligned with strict public funding regulations (even while you scale operations!), so you can breeze through audits with minimal mess and fuss.

Ontario Council on Articulation and Transfer (ONCAT), has been a client since 2016 and moved to Sage Intacct in 2022 to improve their automation, move to the cloud, make sure they were on a leading accounting software for nonprofits rather than just using what was working, and many other reasons. Peter Desera, the Manager of Finance estimates that Intacct automation has freed up 20-25% of his time. He added “The automation that comes with Intacct frees up time that would have been spent on day-to-day activities, so I can focus on the more in-demand tasks, like forecasting, budgeting, reporting.” (Read the full nonprofit case study here)

Data-driven decision-making and real-time reporting are not just fancy corporate lingo. Sage Intacct takes it literally by providing flexible tools and visual reports that clearly compare your budget to your actual expenditure – keeping you on track with actionable insights that steer decisions and drive real impact.

2. Restriction Tracking

As a non-profit, making sure dollars are used wisely and transparently is a major responsibility in managing donor restrictions. Some donors have specific instructions on how and when their funding is used. To accomplish these requests, you need powerful restriction-tracking software. Sage Intacct’s accounting software for nonprofits is a donor’s dream by allowing you to comply with their every funding wish… without extra work.

When you spend funds, Sage Intacct automatically captures these transactions and applies them against the specific donor’s expectations. You know, those manual entries that are sometimes wildly inaccurate? It’s time to leave them behind. Sage Intacct tracks your expenditures and updates them in real-time. Then, once it’s time to release the funds, the system automatically calculates and adjusts, so that every dollar is accurately accounted for. It’s truly that easy.

3. Dynamic Allocations

One of the more complex tasks a nonprofit must manage is allocating indirect costs, revenue, assets, or liabilities across different departments or entities. We see all the time, how nonprofits spend significant amounts of time – sometimes days – manually tracking, calculating, and using spreadsheets for allocation data entry, resulting in pricey and pointless headaches.

With Sage Intacct’s dynamic allocation feature, your finance team can automate this whole process, reduce errors, and save hours of valuable time. By defining and setting up your own rules in the system to automatically distribute indirect costs, revenue, assets, or liabilities, you can accurately track exactly whatever you want, like headcount, square footage, or any other dimension, across all entities and in real-time (there’s that fancy corporate lingo again).

Another longtime client, CASA of Los Angeles, used to struggle with a chart of accounts that numbered in the thousands. “We had to create a unique account for every combination of account, department, and fund prior to recording any transactions,” explains Robert Berman, CFO for CASA/LA. “It was time-consuming and unwieldy. With Sage Intacct, our chart of accounts setup is much cleaner and posting accounting activity is simpler and much less time-consuming,” Sage Intacct’s dimensional chart of accounts means that CASA/LA only needs to set up its primary account codes, while departments and funds are represented by dimensions. During posting, the system combines them on the fly. (Read the full nonprofit case study here)

4. Spend Management

Some charities allocate only 60% of donations to their cause because the rest is needed for administrative tasks to keep the program running smoothly. It’s no secret that a non-profit must find clever ways to stretch a dollar to maximize its impact so that as much as possible goes towards supporting the mission. Now, imagine having a vigilant financial ally monitoring the business to make sure budgets aren’t overspent and nothing slips through the cracks.

Sage Intacct’s accounting software for nonprofits has proactive automated methods to enforce spending limits or budgets by General Ledger (GL), department, vendor, or any combination of GL or dimensions, so you don’t have to constantly monitor (or stress) where the money is going. Sage Intacct’s smart spend management tools provide non-profits with full current and future visibility into where the business is in real-time so you can make informed decisions. Nobody enjoys being the budget watchdog, so let Sage Intacct do that for you.

We’re not saying you can’t run a non-profit without Sage Intacct – it’s definitely possible. If you’re satisfied with “good enough”, and enjoy a lot of time-consuming unnecessary work, why look for new efficient and innovative ways of working?

Our team has worked with nonprofits for decades, helping them get the most out of their technology and Sage Intacct is the best accounting software for nonprofits that we’ve seen. Here’s why: with Sage Intacct, managing your nonprofit becomes much smoother, faster, and far less stressful. From managing grants to tackling donation tracking with restrictions to leveraging powerful automation and quickly complying with evolving regulations, Sage Intacct can make a difference in your nonprofit and the community you serve. If your nonprofit wants to work smarter (not harder), speak to one of our technology experts today.