From Frustration to Functionality: Fixing a Client's Moribund Accounting System

The Background:

I was pleasantly surprised two weeks ago when I received an email from a former client at my previous employer. This client operates in the non-profit sector meaning that at any one time, they could be implementing several projects funded by different donors. These donors have specific reporting requirements. 

As I labored reading through the lines, I could understand the frustration they were going through with their accounting system.  This accounting system was not only outdated but also not very user friendly. It had no online / cloud-based version. If the CFO was attending a stakeholders’ forum in the regional office, he could not access the system to approve and review payments. 

Errors could not be corrected in real-time.

My Approach:

I immediately contacted the client and created a board in my project management suite. Project boards are the best in visualizing workflows, tracking progress and enhancing team collaboration.

Within an hour, we had wiggled out of the problem. We were to migrate to a cloud-based accounting system that could easily be accessed from any corner of the globe, real-time review and approval of transactions and ease of integration with other business tools.

The main objective was to remove data silos. The accounting system that we identified was able to integrate other tools such as payroll and time management, client relationship management such that contracts and invoices could be integrated, bank feeds such that the finance staff could only do a classification of the bank entries.

With the organisation fundraising efforts having borne fruits and many donors now on board, we created classes to track the transactions per donor. The budgets for each class were also created with the budget codes and description as per the accounting system matching the approved donor budgets. We posted several transactions, and ran reports by class for profit and loss, balance sheet, cashflow and the budget variance analysis indicating the burn rates.

We also contacted the developer of the system for a provision of scaling the accounting system for the expected future growth.

Client Satisfaction:

The CEO and CFO will now be able to attend capacity building workshops and at the same access the accounting system and balance the books.  A significant improvement in reporting is expected to be efficient. We are pegging the increase at 50%.  No more costs will be flagged as ineligible by the donors anymore.