Financial Management

Sure, raising money is tough. But knowing what to do with that money once you have it can be even tougher. And with competition for every dollar at an all-time high, you can’t risk donor confidence through poor financial management.

We understand the unique challenges nonprofits face, from strict reporting and accountability requirements, to day-to-day budgeting, forecasting, spending, and reporting needs: Even though you’re a nonprofit, you’ve got a business to manage.

That’s where The Financial Edge comes in. It’s a nonprofit accounting solution unlike any other, designed to tune in to your organization’s specific needs and transform data into the information you need to make smart strategic decisions. Think of it as insurance for your future.

The Financial Edge can handle just about anything you throw at it, including:

• Strategic Financial Management
  Turn abstract numbers into clear forecasting and planning information.
• Accountability/Stewardship
  Build your stakeholders’ trust…and keep it.
• Budgeting/Planning
  Stretch your resources: Do more with less.
• Spending
  Tighten the reigns by putting your spending on auto-pilot.
• Collections
  Decrease time spent collecting, and increase time spent fundraising.

• Managing Multiple Funds
  Traditional nonprofit accounting relies on a fund accounting approach, which ensures that you appropriately steward donations and grants. It also provides detailed expense information and helps ensure managerial oversight of operations.
  
  
• Tracking Costs
  How many spreadsheets do you currently have to track the specific details for special grants, gifts, endowments, or programs? Comprehensive nonprofit accounting solutions allow you to eliminate error-prone spreadsheets and easily perform complex distributions, creating financial statements for all the programs you administer.
  
  
• Crossing Fiscal Years
  For grants, gifts, endowments, and programs that cross fiscal years — with reporting dates that do not fall during normal periods — nonprofit accounting solutions provide reports for specific date ranges that can span fiscal periods or fiscal years.
  
  
• Budgeting
  With boards asking for multiple projections before agreeing on an annual budget, nonprofits need fund accounting software that takes the pain out of manipulating multiple budget scenarios and eliminates the need to re-enter high volumes of information from previous years. With the right nonprofit-specific solution, you can begin with a copy of last year’s budget and then make appropriate changes to specific areas with a few clicks, saving time and increasing accuracy.
  
  
• Reporting
  Faced with very specific reporting requirements — such as FASB 117 that dictates how your statements of cash flow and financial position must be presented — you need a solution that helps you comply with regulations. Plus, you need a way to give executive directors, board members, donors, and funders the information they want fast.
  
  
• Integration
  At organizations that raise money, CFOs should look for nonprofit accounting solutions that work seamlessly with a high-quality fundraising solution. Integration between a development operation and the financial side of a nonprofit is essential to providing a tight audit trail, maintaining accuracy, and ensuring effective stewardship of all donations.

• Adopt a true fund accounting solution
• Get rid of spreadsheets: Track all expenses and details associated with projects and grants within one system
• Generate multiple budget scenarios and streamline the budget preparation process
• Comply with all nonprofit-specific reporting requirements and generate financial reports in a wide variety of formats
• Seamlessly connect to The Raiser’s Edge (the world’s best-known and loved nonprofit fundraising solution) for a tight audit trail and world-class stewardship

• Share timely, accurate information with key stakeholders
• Ensure donated funds are accounted for and protected
• Quickly respond to your auditor’s requests for supporting detail
• Verify to donors that gifts were used as intended
• Produce easy-to-understand, presentation-quality reports and analyses

• Involves all key stakeholders in the budgeting process
• Tracks the status of the budget in real-time, giving key stakeholders immediate and ongoing access to current budget details
• Allows managers to track actual performance against the budget
• Can be quickly and readily adjusted to meet changing economic conditions

• Turn your budget into a planning and forecasting tool
• Take advantage of powerful budgeting, in-depth analysis, and reporting features that replace spreadsheets and cumbersome, error-prone third-party tools
• Budget as many years into the future as needed so your organization can prioritize expenditures, assess funding needs, and make comparisons across fiscal years
  Learn more about how The Financial Edge can help your budget become an agent for change.

Learn more about how The Financial Edge can help your budget become an agent for change.





Spending

Like any business, nonprofits have to spend money to generate revenue. But unlike many companies, nonprofits constantly struggle to justify purchases — no matter how small — and to make sure expenditures stay within very conservative budgets. And even with efforts to control costs, spending can too quickly get out of control.

Nonprofit accounting solutions can help you:

• Leverage the power of the web
  In the purchasing process, paper forms and documents lead to chaos. Software automates the requisition process by enabling multiple departments, sites, and budget managers to make purchase requests electronically, through a single, shared environment.
  
  
• Simplify purchase requests
  With electronic requisitions, you can search for products online instead of wasting time leafing through bulky catalogs.
  
  
• Easily enforce the budget
  An electronic purchasing solution can automatically enforce spending limits to reduce costs and eliminate departmental overspending.

• Move critical procurement processes online, including requisitions, purchase orders, approvals, and common product selections — to reduce errors and save time
• Consolidate multiple small orders to realize quantity discounts
• Keep close watch on budgets by determining the availability of funds using budget checking and commitment control functionality
• Leverage ready-to-go reports to quickly analyze your purchases
• Approve procurement requests anytime, anywhere for maximum convenience

• Streamline nonprofit collections
  Today’s nonprofit-specific technology solutions allow organizations to bill multiple parties for services rendered to a single client and keep track of these key payment relationships. By eliminating double entry and automating repetitive tasks, nonprofit accounting solutions free up time that can be better spent improving relationships with customers and reducing the collections cycle.
  
  
• Enhance client management and service
  Having a single accounts receivable system gives nonprofit managers continually-updated, real-time information about a client’s balance and payment status.
  
  
• Produce flexible reports
  With a flexible system in place, organizations can get on-demand trend and transaction reports, providing instant access to the type of information nonprofit managers need to make mission-critical decisions.
  
  
• Manage billing and payment application
  A nonprofit’s accounts receivable system should have billing and payment functionality in four key areas: the option to pay by cash, check, credit card, money orders, CODs, and bank drafts; the ability to automatically apply payments and credits to a specific charge, multiple invoices, or based on past or current charges; the ability to handle client deposits and prepayments while applying to future invoices; distribution of invoices proportionately across individual clients and their third-party funding source.