Easily Create a Duplicate Invoice Example for Nonprofit Organizations

Duplicate invoice example for Nonprofit

very good to be with you all very excited for folks who who are joining us um from as a participant is also as a as a fellow presenter um before i do introductions of speakers you want to talk briefly about who we are as a firm so our name is dean dorton we are full service a cpa and business consulting firm with elections with offices in kentucky and north carolina our market expands coast to coast of the us as well as internationally but we're primarily thought of as a southeast regional firm i mean our our services include you know the what you would expect from a accounting firm but i also want to emphasize that we have a high level of outsourcing services that we provide from outsourced accounting outsource technology outside outsource cyber security overall outsourced i.t and software work so that makes us somewhat different from other accounting firms here's a picture of our panel of speakers today i'm there on the left oh by katie rupert who is a manager within the accounting financial services group katie's focuses on nonprofits so you all are her people and she is here to serve and answer any questions that you may have kristen ash is also a manager in the accounting and financial services team and she is located physically in the raleigh north carolina north carolina market so you would hear more from them as we proceed our agenda is in front of you we're just going to talk about where we are and where the non-profit industry is uh some ideas for embracing new technology what people are saying about this uh this process of time at the end for any q a all right so katie rupert is going to take the slides next um and she's going to talk just get an overview of where the where she sees the non-profit industry okay here you go thanks justin hi everyone so as justin mentioned nonprofit is really my exclusive focus here at dean dorton and over my whole career i've pretty much always worked in and with non-profit organizations so i really just love taking things out of the way so that people that can really do the good work in our communities have the free time to be able to actually do it and the information they need to do it so let's dig into this slide the first thing i want to mention is that it you may have noticed that it's becoming harder and harder to attract and retain really good board leaders so your board leaders are really they need to use their time wisely so you need to be able to provide them with information that's very specific to their needs so that they're able to make the decisions and answer the questions they need to in order to effectively lead your organization the same is true for your program managers so your program managers are really stretched thin and they need the right information at the right time to be able to make the right decisions and lead your programs in a mission-focused direction and lastly you know donors are being tapped more than ever before so being able to come to them with effective information at that ask will help you sustain those donors over the long run so it's really important to be able to speak to all of your audiences all of your variety of audiences on demand meet them where they are and then get the clutter out of the way so that you can really provide them with the information they need specifically so covet is hopefully starting to appear in our uh rear view mirror rather than our front mirror or our our windshield and when we were going through this pandemic most of our nonprofit organizations were we were really doing whatever we needed to do to get the job done but now that it's starting to subside we really have to refocus on good internal control practices and good data security but the needles moved so we really don't want to lose all of those great things that we've come to know so well you know web-based meetings electronic data exchange we just need as we look at digital transformation to identify ways to keep the things that we really like keep the best and fix the rest so that's what we're looking to do in the aftermath of kovid kovad also brought to light a lot of needs in our community that may have been there before but they really have a spotlight on them now as the trend continues for government funds to really be [Music] over purpose to be diverted and over extended more and more the non-profits are the organizations that are stepping up to fill those needs in our community the nonprofits provide the safety net for many individuals they provide resources for families and in a lot of ways nonprofits are starting to become collaborative opportunities for businesses to really make the changes they need to make in in a new and dynamic world so nonprofits not only have to do more with less but there are also more non-profits uh you may have noticed that in in the aftermath of covet and over especially over this last year we've really seen a pop-up of a lot of non-profits that are being formed to address specific uh specific needs within communities so it's really important that you're able to really distinguish your nonprofit that each individual nonprofit has a voice so again as we look to digital transformation we need to find ways to make sure that your nonprofit is defined and visible in your community and that's going to allow you to really effectively honor your mission and lastly you know livable wage is not going down we have always struggled as non-profits to be able to stretch those dollars but we know in most non-profit organizations you're really people based people are what make it possible for you to really meet the needs of your mission so in order to do that effectively one of the things that we we know is that you're going to have a leg up if you can effectively measure your return on investment not really in dollars although dollars are important but really looking at each of the positions in your organizational chart and being able to speak to how that position advances your mission how it makes it possible for you to do what you need to do and then having a similar technique of measuring return on investment for all of your major investments technology being one of them but but also just the entire process management and the pieces that go into that process so let's flip to the next slide justin and to effectively address these challenges that we just talked about we think it's really important for you to for non-profits to really have a paradigm shift in your accounting function so really just thinking about a different way of doing business when it comes to your accounting function in a static accounting function it's one that really relies on manual processes so you may have only one or a couple of individuals within your organization that complete your accounting or your bookkeeping tasks whereas in a dynamic environment you try to automate as much as possible so that you don't need a special set of keys to be able to accomplish these tools or to be able to accomplish the outcomes you need to accomplish a good example of automation is bill pay there's a lot of opportunities for for automation and bill pay but some of the things we don't necessarily think about are things like donor management and event planning or fundraising management in a static environment your technology tends to be locally localized so you have your physical technology is really in that one location and again you've only got one or two people who need to be physically located in that place to be able to get that work done whereas in a cloud-based system you're able to really decentralize the work it enables your team to really engage as needed without that unnecessary disruption to the other work that they have to get done cloud-based systems are also generally more secure and they really tend to include the redundancy and the backup that it is difficult to really mimic in a local environment so cloud-based systems are definitely a indicator of a more dynamic accounting function in a dynamic function accounting function you can also plug in your subject matter experts as needed so these might be a permanent plug like a payroll provider or it could be a project based initiative like a fundraising team a fundraising system that you would plug in as needed so we touched base earlier on the importance of reporting that really meets the needs of your users where they're at in a very on-demand sort of format and in a dynamic accounting function you really have that ability to provide real-time data and dynamic reports because they tend to be systems that allow you to slice and dice your data in a in a much more easy format whereas a static accounting function comes with your canned reports that are good they definitely meet your compliance needs but they don't necessarily focus in on the needs of your users when they need the information they need automated and cloud-based systems really lend themselves to that electronic workflow opportunity and the advantage of the electronic workflow is that it really does minimize your opportunity for error and it also standardizes the sign-offs and the security that auditors just really love to see and so that gives you a little bit of a leg up on being able to meet the needs of your audit if you are an audited firm and it gives you that added security even if you're not that the processes you've put in place are being followed and lastly on this list a digital office is one in which your supporting documentation and your audit trail are really right there alongside your transaction so when you have a question about the balance in postage you're able to with within that same system um see who authorized the transaction what it was for when it was paid who it was paid to and in order to get that done you don't have to dig through your desk and find that tiny little correct filing cabinet key that will open the filing cabinet and you don't have to know if the ups store is filed under t for the you for ups or key for postage you don't have to guess if it's in the fiscal year file or the calendar year file it's just right there right alongside your transaction and there are so many advantages and such a time saver to be able to do that and that's that's really a good motivation for moving along on your digital transformation journey so uh let's click to the next slide and one of the things that we really want to do is to see where you're at in your digital transformation journey this is you know just a quick little assessment we've got 18 questions so i'd like you to grab a piece of scratch paper it doesn't have to be big we just need you to be able to put some columns on your paper yellow green purple and we're going to add hashtags as we go so the first couple of slides we're going to keep in mind your accounting or your bookkeeping team so i want you to think about that individual or maybe it's you maybe you have a small team of people or a large team of people that are really responsible for paying bills recording deposits making sure that you have financial statements at the end of each month and really meeting all of your needs in an accounting function so first i'd just like you to make a hash mark under the column that is best associated with the size of your team so if it's less than three or less you would put a hashtag under yellow and so on then we want to look at the accounting skills of that team so by this i mean you know do they understand revenue recognition and the period in which a transaction should be recognized do they understand accrual accounting or cost allocation if cost allocation is something that you need to do in your organization um do they understand what's needed to document a donation so that it's acceptable under an audit if you were to be challenged on that and do they really understand what needs to be done to preserve your tax exempt status from an accounting perspective so just give that a couple of minutes or a couple of seconds of thought and put a hash mark under low medium or high as it relates to their capacity to be able to do that and technology is pretty self-explanatory so i want you to just think about the technology skills the mastery of technology that your accounting team has and then their awareness of emerging technology and then i want you to think about the awareness of not only current accounting practices or things that might be changing but also best practices in just general business so by this i mean um practices insurance and risk management human resources being aware of changes in the law as it relates to payroll things like that and then the last item on this slide is internal controls so even if you have a really small team and maybe if it's just you how comfortable are you with is that team with really mitigating risk do you feel like they really understand the best ways to mitigate risk given the size of the organization so let's flip to the next slide then and we're going to continue to think about your accounting or your bookkeeping team and the first item there is pretty straightforward do you meet the deadlines so these would be board deadlines or the needs of your program managers if you need to submit grant invoices are those things happening on time and then the second point is are they happening with precision and by that i i'm looking back to what we talked about when we first started with your the users of your financial data are they getting information that's right for them are they able to really uh zero in on the information they need to make the right decisions and then next is it accurate or or do you oftentimes have to go back do people catch errors and you have to go back and correct it is the report really not instilling confidence because it's it's not complete information so we want to rank whether your team has a low medium or high ability to get that done then we're going to shift gears a little and think about how stretched your team is does your team have the ability to take leave and really refresh as needed when an emergency comes up does everybody just start pulling out their hair and losing their mind or do you really have enough capacity within your team to be able to roll with the punches the second to the last point is whether this team really understands the information they're putting out if someone asks the question and they just aren't very savvy in the ways of accounting are the members of your team able to really explain what the data means and then lastly on this slide we i want to just have an understanding of those team members are they being asked to do a lot of other things within your organization so do they double as receptionists do they double as program people who deliver direct service maybe they're doing human resources as as an adjunct piece to the accounting so i want to highlight that yellow has swapped here we're not low yellow is high so if that happens a lot in your organization you want to put a hash mark of yellow and then if it's low you'd want to put a hash mark under purple and then we're going to go to the very last slide of this assessment and we're going to switch gears and think about your leadership so this might be just a single executive director or president that might be you um or it might be a team of people that's around the executive director and president that really make the day-to-day decisions and so thinking about that group how comfortable are they with technology or is that person with technology then what's their communication style you know are they able to be proactive or is everything a fire drill for them they just need information when they need it third point is similar in their comfort with resolving and material concerns in batches and an example of that would be does does this individual or team do they wait for meetings and then they tackle a bunch of things at once or do they really have a sense of urgency whenever some sort of issue comes up in their mind they need a resolution right away if that's the case then they probably have a low comfort level with dealing with things in batches covid's given us that opportunity to really understand how comfortable we are with remote interaction so hopefully you have some insight into whether or not the senior leadership team is comfortable with remote interactions and then financial data can be issued you know right after a month ends or you can wait until every piece of information is known how comfortable is your senior leadership with those types of assumptions do they prefer to see january data that first week in february even though they know there's going to be some assumptions about that last payroll about the investment returns um some of your expenses will be estimated or are they more comfortable waiting until the very end of february maybe even the beginning of march to get to in order for january's data to be 100 accurate and supported and then lastly and this is pretty self-explanatory too um what's their ability to follow the agreed-upon processes senior leadership tends to be visionary and sometimes visionary individuals have difficulty following the processes and sometimes they're very comfortable with that so we'd just like to get a sense of that by having you put a hashtag under the correct column of color and then go ahead and add up your hashtags there's 18 possible under each one but we're really just interested in where you have the most this obviously was not a scientific poll by any means but what it does is it gives us we we do tend to see that these indicators give us an impression of where you'll be most successful in your next step so there's a lot of words on this slide but i do think you're getting a copy of this so don't worry about that specifically but if you had a lot of yellow responses um then you might be in a position where uh you really want to to gauge how you're using your reset resources right now you might want to step back and consider plugging in some external assistance that just might make sense for you to be able to capture all the advantages of digital transformation without right now making that investment expense wise and time wise into getting it done well if the majority of your hash marks were in the in the green area then you're probably somewhat on track with digital transformation but you likely have some barriers uh in process or people and by having a non-emotional assessment of where you're at doing a formal assessment allows you to frame that in a way that you can usually tackle those problems much more easily and if the majority of your responses were in the mature and mission driven category then you're probably right on track with digital transformation but there's always some soft spots and the way to adjust soft spots best are by having a formalized process for identifying and addressing them that will allow you to be able to retain your advantage and make sure that that your that your process is evolved as your organization grows so thank you i'm going to turn you over then to krista and she's going to dig into give us giving us a better idea of how some of these concepts can really become action for your organization thank you katie as we all know um especially with the events of this past year digital transformation is now imperative companies have needed to be prepared to efficiently effectively harness new technologies as well as prioritize digital transformation which has meant adapting to new ways of working next slide justin like decentralizing which katie mentioned a moment ago modern software tools allow you the ability to store and access your data in the cloud gone are the days of relying on your copies of source documentation in the filing cabinet or relying on your co-workers down the hall this is especially beneficial for accounting using cloud-based accounting software allows you access to real-time data anytime anywhere that can give you a current financial snapshot of your organization whenever you need it with migrating to the cloud you can use specialized applications that allow you to integrate your software needs developing a dynamic digital infrastructure that keeps driving value for your organization you can streamline efficiencies with customized workflows a cloud-based platform allows you customized design of your tech stack or system to bring flexibility and automation to your organization's operational workflow and this flexibility and additional infrastructure also allows you to more easily outsource or co-source if needed while still having the real-time visibility and control of your financial details a non-profit executive director typically has a passion for a charitable cause but probably doesn't prefer managing accounting so whether your organization needs to expand accounting services beyond basic bookkeeping or hire a complete accounting department outsourced and co-sourced accounting offers scalable service options that provide efficiencies and peace of mind with your system and organization next thing we know that better insight allows for better decision making so you need whatever accounting system you use to be efficient while delivering accurate and timely information you need real-time data and access to that data anytime from anywhere in order to make timely business decisions so a bird's-eye view like a dashboard provides gives you visibility into relevant measurable metrics and key performance indicators that will allow you to keep your focus on the financial health of your organization customize reports with dimensional structure preferably tailored to your industry that have drill down capability if you need it to your source documents or comparative data will be beneficial for clear analysis forecasting and budgeting and next slide in order to get this level of outcome-focused accounting function you really need cloud-based accounting tools the modern true cloud solution has open apis that provide connectivity visibility and efficiency through the modern technology of analytics robotic process automation and artificial intelligence this allows you to do more with less so all of these tools you see listed here are great options that allow for automated process which save you time and reduce human error and at the end of the day saves your company money so let's look at some examples since we believe good accounting starts with a great system here at dean jordan we partner with sage intact sage intact specializes in delivering real-time visibility into the metrics that matter to further your mission they bring a robust infrastructure while at the same time keep it simple with a very user-friendly interface it allows you for easy entry of your accounting transactions that will be accessible to you anytime anywhere on any computer or device it allows you to not only get an accurate current financial snapshot of your business but also makes it easy to share data and integrate with other solutions to further automate such as the vendor payment tool one of the software applications we use here at dean jordan is bill.com bill.com allows you to capture approve pay and sync to your accounting software to deliver that real-time snapshot it automates invoice entry using smart features like automatic data entry and duplicate invoice detection it allows for customized approval workflows and offers flexible payment processing so moving on to credit card and employee expense tools expensify and exony are two of the most popular software tools we use for managing and automating credit card purchases as well as employee expenses these tools allow the same visibility for entries and submissions like bill.com does and the same ability to build the custom workflows you need for review approval and payments at a minimum a modern accounting system should automate and streamline your core financial management functions such as the accounts receivable accounts payable and month close like you see here a cloud-based infrastructure provides the new needed collaborative two-way interface for your tools to sync your information um it pulls it together in real time to deliver that value focused accounting functionality that i've mentioned all the green lines you see here are the manual processes that are going on within your team or behind the scenes with your software you can definitely utilize these cloud-based tools and manage all this yourselves or you can automate and allow external experts to manage this for you through outsourced or co-source accounting next slide again the embracing of digital transformation whether be through the use of technology tools or coupled with outsourced accounting services allows you to leverage the power of cloud technology to ensure your mission success through steering process and organization performance increasing the number of cloud applications and digital technologies like we just discussed provide cost efficiencies through automation it provides access to industry experts one of the biggest benefits of accounting outsourced accounting i'm sorry is access to accounting and business technology experts that assure the best practices and accounting standards outsourcing allows a business to eliminate the time and expense associated with recruiting training and managing additional accounting staff as well as reducing the risk and cost of turnover and again it allows you the flexibility to build services and a platform to meet your specific organizational needs anything from clerical controller or cfo consulting next slide so an example of utilizing this leverage is visualized here it takes the very busy image you saw a moment ago with the green arrows and manual process to this simplified version of your accounting function with full access to your data without the business busyness you can have real-time data quick access to dashboards and key performance indicators while giving you easy-to-read custom reports that will meet the needs of your organizational roles justin thank you krista and one thing is krista and katie just went through a lot of information hopefully it helps you to understand some of the benefits of migrating away from a desktop version of your software or or maybe the system that you had in place that you bought you're so proud of you don't quite want to make the change hopefully we've made you know the potential change easier for you um an example i like to give a lot of people say no i'm not it's just too much of a change our accounting system is great i'm nervous about all these different tools an example that i like to to share with people that every 99.9 percent of americans have adopted is the smartphone you have a smartphone full of apps that do a bunch of individual things you don't have you have it would be wonderful if we had one app on our one phone that did everything but you have your your apps for your various credit cards your apps for your banks your app for your your budget tracker your app with your friends your app list your social media your apps with your your professional social media and and then your your app with your social social media that you don't want your mom and dad to see so if um we're already accustomed to using tools to meet our needs so why why not let various accounting and finance tools out there meet our needs especially with this new cloud-based technology allows those tools to partner well to to help you further your organization we'll share with you a success story the idea that sage intact could reduce our chart of accounts from 56 000 to 100 is probably a dream for me i'm sherry friedman i'm the chief financial officer for room to read when i first came to retreat we were using epicore we were behind several versions and it was very clunky the connectivity was tough it was very slow and created a lot of frustrations around the globe oftentimes a 15-minute task would take three hours we had no standardized process and so as a result every country would sometimes make it up as they went along when i arrived we had 56 000 accounts in our chart of accounts i met with all of the accounting and finance managers around the globe and everyone you know said we just can't work with epicore it's just so hard we can't close the books we were looking at both in sage intact and we were looking at netsuite with sage intact i got yeah we can do that out of the box out of the box out of the box with netsuite it was yes absolutely with customization i had a lot of confidence in stage when i started out i mean i think everyone i met had a really good sense of the non-profit world and the needs of the non-profit with armanino we agreed that we would actually build some key reports right into our system implementation so that the hardest ones the ones that are the biggest challenge came right out of the box for us when we when we pushed the button to go live and that really helped us [Music] we've taken at least a week out of this out of the close process we've given people back a lot of time in the streamlining of our chart of accounts with the dimensions and our variants we've been able to really get deeper into the detail i mean we're able to pull data out around our donor reporting that we could never touch before i think the the reporting is probably the sweet spot for us you know in terms of where we think that we were really able to leverage early some of the real benefits from our implementation and the the power of what sage intact brought to the table our management team is looking at the financials for the first time and thinking wow they're not six months old they're like last week you know the finance and accounting team has just really risen in their own sense of empowerment this idea of being the trusted advisor to the business has become you know sort of our mantra it was really exciting all right thank you for uh listening to that you know what one of the key take takeaways from that presentation um again that was an organization called room to read that transitioned onto sage intact tom who as chris alluded to is a partner of ours providing outsourced accounting services as well as setting clients up for all new accounting systems and they operate the accounting themselves it's it's she emphasized that at the end of how strong the reporting functionality has been so one of the benefits of sage is that it is a report writing system that does accounting most accounting systems are accounting systems that you know 10 days away from from going live they realize oh shoot i have to do some recording so the the recording is largely an afterthought so um that's that is a shameless plug for sage but it's also i just i want to make you aware that there are a lot there's gonna be a lot of reporting resources out there if your native system is not getting you the reports that you need look elsewhere for you know other other tools that specialize in reporting that can link with your system assuming you're on the cloud quickbooks online netsuite whatever the case may be look for these other reporting functions that would better meet your need because there's no reason to be tight to be bogged down in 2021 with manually exporting data manually entering data it should be something that comes out of the system in a presentable manner and then can be used for management purposes also i wanted to point out that she did the speaker sherry she alluded to a couple of marketplace partners armino i believe and bill.com for fuel pay now those are those are just two examples of these these partners that you know apps if you will back to my smartphone example they do specific things but they work within the overall accounting environment offered by sage intact for quickbooks online whomever whoever it may be so um with that said we have about five minutes left would be thrilled to answer any questions from the group jackson i have two questions that came in first question is where does one start with all of this katie would you like to jump on that one sure so uh where do you get started um i think doing some sort of an assessment is your best start you really need to set aside um what we've always done before and really get to the heart of what do we need what kind of information do we need to really answer the questions we have so i like to start with by talking to the people that use your financial data and you know that might be your board members it might be you know your program managers committee members some of your major donors and ask them what type of information do they need to make decisions on a daily basis what do they wish they had that they didn't have or what do they really like about what they're getting right now and then work backwards from there to determine how you want to prioritize the collection of your information so that you can then put it back out there in a way that makes sense for everybody that uses it all right we've got one more question that came through what is the biggest challenge a nonprofit can overcome i take it justin [Laughter] i'm not muted again yet so it really is getting past the way that you've always done it and that's one of the hardest things we all get really comfortable in the things that work we love our excel spreadsheets you know once we work so hard to make them do what we want them to do but guess what they might not answer anybody else's questions anymore so i think really that first step is to you know determine to set aside you know the barrier the biggest barrier is really getting stuck in that rut and setting that aside chris did you have anything to add yeah it's kind of the same thing you know the way you've always done it may may have worked before may still work for you but it may not be the most effective or streamlined solution yeah you know one thing i would add you have to identify what's what are you holding on to out of convenience or out of preference and not necessarily because it has any value good some some people are averse to change because they look at the price tag of swallowing the whole pie versus a piece of pie so why not divide it into projects whether it's okay i want to figure out how to improve the accounts payable function so that i can free up a resource for two hours a week i mean that sounds small but that's still someone's time two hours a week that they can be doing something else maybe they can be working with donors or helping helping upper level management build a campaign that would would further the process you know another way i the question i like to ask people when we're having these discussions like what if simply i get a lot of odd reactions to this but what part of your job are you too good to do like what are you doing that is just flatly beneath you and your skill level and you know you know i asked that it boosts them up a little bit it lets them brag on themselves they talk about the past experience and yada yada yada but there's so many things that people are holding on to um really for no reason obvious i think katie and i were talking about this previously there are no greater martyrs in the world than finance and accounting people we love to hold on to things because and we love and we love the thrill of the relief of telling people how busy we are rather than tell people you know this is the value that i brought so it's a big paradigm shift that shifting from i am delivering this value and potentially i'm going home at a decent hour versus oh i worked 60 hours last week so that i could cut checks and do my bank recon so it's an interesting exercise but i think it starts with having the humility and carving out you know making it a priority to with humility look at your process where is it broken and what is what what was needed [Music] you