Sage Intacct and DWD Technology help nonprofit gain efficiencies and extend its mission.
The Challenge
A long-time user of MIP, Arrow Child & Family Ministries faced the challenge of their software no longer working to their benefit.
The Solution
Sage Intacct is the ideal platform to increase Arrow’s financial operations. Scalable, flexible workflows keep give staff more freedom and a better work-life balance.
Results with Sage Intacct
- Program-specific budget and cost data for individual program leaders
- Dashboards helpful by leveraging statistical accounts
- Putting off the hire of additional staff
- Month-end processing going from two-weeks to less than a week
- Reducing IT spending
- Integration with Concur
About Arrow Child & Family Ministries
Helping kids and strengthening families has been Arrow Child & Family Ministries’ (Arrow) mission since its launch in 1992. Founded by a former foster child, Arrow is keenly aware of the difference a loving, supportive environment and an engaged community can make. Today, Arrow operates in two states, delivering an array of services, including healthcare, education, residential treatment, behavioral health, and foster care. The need in this sector is greater than the resources available, so Arrow works tirelessly to grow its operations efficiently and cost-effectively to meet demand. For Arrow, Sage Intacct and DWD Technology Group play a critical role in that growth.
Company: Arrow Child & Family Ministries
Location: Texas, USA
Industry: Non-for-Profit
Sage Products: Sage Intacct
Sage Partner: DWD Technology Group
Outgrowing MIP
“We were outgrowing MIP,” recalls Connie Larue, Arrow’s Accounting Manager.
“With new programs, locations, and grants to manage, MIP just couldn’t keep up. There was too much we had to do manually outside the system—it seemed like every task had extra touchpoints. Plus, it was a challenge getting data in and out of MIP to share with Concur and other applications.”
As the organization grew to 19 locations and 525 employees, its accounting needs became more sophisticated. “We needed to perform consolidations and allocations, and MIP simply wasn’t cut out to do that,” Connie says. “To generate financial reports for the organization as a whole, for example, we had to export reports from each entity, bring the data into Excel, break it down, and reassemble it. I think our workbook had 20 tabs.”
Careful evaluation leads to Sage Intacct
Following a careful fiscal plan, Connie says the organization built the cost of a replacement accounting application into its budget a full year before they took action. “We then began reviewing our options,” she says. “We looked at several applications available that fit the nonprofit space, narrowing it down to a handful.”
Following demonstrations of that handful of applications, Arrow identified Sage Intacct as its next-generation accounting solution. “DWD was the Sage Intacct vendor, and we’d worked with them before,” Connie explains. “They know our organization and us, and we knew they’d continue to work hard for us.”
Partner leads a swift migration
Under DWD’s skilled direction, the move from MIP to Sage Intacct went smoothly. DWD migrated roughly three million rows of data from MIP to Sage Intacct. “DWD impressed us,” Connie says. “They brought in all our data, journal entries, and budgets. It helped us be productive right away.”
Empowering program managers
In addition to streamlining daily accounting workflows, one of Arrow’s goals for its new system was to empower individual program leaders through access to program-specific budget and cost data. “In Sage Intacct, DWD helped us build a dashboard for each leader so they can see their program’s financial data,” explains Connie. “Just this simple step has created a more collaborative process with higher levels of accountability. The leaders now own their data and can monitor it throughout the month. Without exception, they tell us they love it—it makes them feel more involved and empowered.”
The dashboards Connie refers to become even more helpful by leveraging statistical accounts.
“DWD showed us how we can use these non-financial accounts to hold data like the number of children in a location or the type of services required,” Connie explains. “That allows us to report on our activities very granularly. We also use that information to optimize staffing levels at each location.”
Saving the equivalent of one full-time staff member
The finance team mirrors the efficiencies the program managers experience with Sage Intacct. “We’re fully optimizing the time and efforts of the resources we have,” Connie says.
“At one point during our future planning, we believed we would need to hire an additional accounting person to support our growth. However, we’ve grown so much more efficient with Sage Intacct that we have been able to put off hiring any new staff. Collectively, we believe we’re actually saving the time of one full-time staff member. To a nonprofit, this is golden.”
Part of the time savings comes from eliminating the previous cumbersome allocation workflow. Sage Intacct simplifies and streamlines allocations and inter-company transactions. “Before, recording inter-company transactions was painstakingly manual,” Connie explains. “It was messy and easy to get out of balance. But now, it’s super simple. I remember thinking, ‘That’s it? That’s all I need to do?’ It is so easy!”
Month-end processing time cut in half
Connie says the organization continues to add up the overall time savings the move delivered. “It’s positively impacted every aspect of our financial operations, so there’s a lot to add up!”
One area where the savings is clear is month-end processing. “Before, month-end processing took us nearly two weeks—and it was a huge push to make that,” she says. “Now we’re done in less than a week. We cut the time in half, giving our team less stress and a better work-life balance.”
Cost savings add up
The move to cloud-based Sage Intacct also allows Arrow to reduce its IT spending.
“We no longer have to maintain the in-house server,” Connie says. “We have a small IT team, and now they can reallocate their time to other initiatives.”
Arrow continues to use Concur for employee expense processing but is now able to integrate Concur directly with Sage Intacct, eliminating the expense of the middleware application that was previously required. The organization now plans to extend its use of Concur into accounts payable automation to streamline accounting workflows further.
The gift of time
Connie says the single most significant benefit Arrow derives from its implementation of Sage Intacct is the gift of time. “For us, I imagine for every organization, time saved equals efficiency. We can use that time to build out processes, workflows, and strategies that support our growth and further our mission. The time saved allows us to get out in front instead of playing catch up. And most of all, by eliminating all those manual tasks, we are maximizing the talents of our staff—which honors them and greatly benefits the organization.”
Taking the Next Step
When you are ready to take the next step and need a partner to provide trusted advisory, DWD is here to help contact us today.
