Name: Warning Signs Your Accounting Office Isn’t Efficient: How to Review Your People, Processes, and Systems
Uploaded: 2025-07-29T18:32:01.463Z
Duration: 1 h 16 s
Description: Warning Signs Your Accounting Office Isn’t Efficient: How to Review Your People, Processes, and Systems

Transcript for "Warning Signs Your Accounting Office Isn’t Efficient: How to Review Your People, Processes, and Systems": Hi, everybody. Welcome to today's webinar. I'm Sarah Curry. I'm part of the marketing team here at Blackbaud, and I'll be your host. Today, we're gonna be discussing warning signs your accounting office is inefficient and how to review your people, processes, and systems. Before we begin, I'm gonna go through a few housekeeping items in the system. The first is that you should see our engagement tools panel on the right hand side of your screen. So you can see chat, which I see a number of you in. Talking about the temperature right now. It is toasty outside. Hopefully, everyone's staying cool. You can also download today's deck under the docs tab. That's the first link, and then I'll go through later, the rest of the links there as well. We will be recording today's session and sending it out to your email. That normally takes a few hours in the system, and you'll get an email whenever it's ready. We will be sharing polls today. If you're hoping to get CPE credit, I'll go through that a little bit more in a few minutes. But when those are live, they will pop up in that engagement panel. There isn't currently one live, so you will not see it there. Andrew and I will let you know when those are ready so you don't miss them, and I normally leave them up for a few minutes to give you time to navigate there and respond. If you run into any issues, drop a note in chat or message me, and I'll make sure that we get you noted, so you get credit. If you have any questions, you can do that either in chat or the q and a tab of that engagement panel. Andrew and I will answer stuff throughout, and then we'll have time at the end for live q and a. And then if you run into any issues where the sound drops or we freeze, refresh your browser. That normally does the trick. And if you run into, further issues, message me, and I'll see if I can help you. Okay. I did wanna let everybody know, one of our reps, Miranda, is on the line today. Hi, Miranda. She is an extension of our sales team. So if you have any sales specific questions, she is a great person to talk with. She can normally get you connected with a rep as quickly as the next business day. There is a link on the screen to book time with her. You can also message her, and she has dropped a link in the chat as well. Alright. If you have any chat or support questions for us, I've included a link on the screen to that, as well as a reminder of the hotline you can call. That is the quickest way to get those answered, because Andrea and I can't always get to all of those in the chat. So, bookmark that that site. I use it as well. Alright. And then last thing before we get started, if you're hoping to get a CPE credit today, we are offering one credit for the hour long webinar. Make sure that you stay on the full time. I do check that, and I have to to report exactly how long you were here, and you'll need to respond to all three polls. So, again, we'll let you know when those are live and how to reply, but make sure that you answer those. There's space throughout the presentation. And I normally try to get those certificates sent out no later than two weeks after the session. And if you wanna write this email address down, I monitor that inbox. If you have any questions or run into any issues, please feel free to email me, and we'll get you straightened out. Alright. Let's get started. So, Andrew is our fearless leader of our ultimate CFO, webinar series, and we're thrilled to welcome him back today for, I think, our fifth webinar this year. And I'm excited to talk about this one, because it we're not just gonna be covering warning signs, but what to do about them. So, Andrew, thank you so much for joining us today, and I'll go ahead and hand it off to you. Alright. Thank you, sir. And thank you everybody for joining me. Hopefully, you're not just here for the CPE credit, but if you are, just stick around for the polls. So what we're here to talk about today is kind of some warning signs your accounting office isn't effective. And as Sarah said, we're gonna go through some kinda warning signs, but also some ways to kinda start counteracting it. I just know in the nonprofit world, sometimes you know things are wrong, but it can be very overwhelming to try to make those changes. So just trying to give you good places to start or some tips and tricks along the way is what we'll talk about. As Sarah said, feel free to put any questions in the chat. Try to answer them as we go, but we'll definitely follow-up anything we missed and don't get to during the presentation. So let's get wrong way. Let's get started. So a little bit about me. So I am the current director of finance at the Fifth Avenue Committee. It's an affordable nonprofit affordable housing nonprofit here in New York City based in Brooklyn. I'm also the founder and partner of Innovate for Good. Really just trying to help nonprofits get the most out of their people, process, and systems and kinda use what you're already paying for and not have to make these big investments and just kinda run efficiently. I've been in the non nonprofit field for fifteen years. I probably have to update that by a few years, unfortunately. And you can see there a picture of me and my daughter in a favorite place of me carrying her around. Unfortunately, today, if you include the dog, you have the fourth best, Harrow, but I'm I'm happy to be here today. So what do we hope to achieve in the next fifty five minutes? And really, it's kind of how do you recognize these warning signs? And really, some of it is just how do you separate out that day to day, I'm frustrated. This stinks versus, okay, these are real structural issues in the way we do things and may lead to bigger things. Kind of how do you recognize how do you have that smoke alarm to the fire that might be upcoming? And we're gonna try to gain that structured approach to assessing the effectiveness of your team, your processes, and your system to just figure out not just where the hidden inefficiencies are, but, like, where to start? Where should I start looking? Like, how do I identify places that maybe are low hanging fruit? What are those bigger projects? And then kind of ending it with with that true where to start. What are some things that I can take to a meeting this afternoon and start thinking about to try to get on that path of real efficiency? And when I talk about efficiency, I think it's a big thing, especially for nonprofits today. With all the fluctuations in funding and what some nonprofits are doing, having that accounting department, finance department, fiscal department, whatever you wanna call it, having it be efficient, being able to get those reports out, being able to get the information in the hands of the people making the decisions and the people in the field, I think is so key. And that all comes back to having efficient people processing systems so that the data is flowing in real time. For the agenda, kinda just hitting it up again. How do you recognize those inefficiencies? What are those process and technology pitfalls? We'll touch a little bit on people, but I'll tell you why we don't when we get there. And then the frameworks and strategies for improve. Now I was putting this together and, being on my own, I don't have a team. I had asked AI for some help, and this is my today. AI isn't taking over your job. I asked AI for two images or charts that show how to make an accounting team more efficient. The one is a bunch of fake people looking at a computer, so collaboration, I guess. I don't know why it gave me a picture of a wolf. It's kind of open into interpretation, but it made me laugh enough that I left it in the presentation. So as you go through, just think that Microsoft Copilot really thought a wolf was necessary for this presentation. I I like that lone wolf department. It's very it's usually, sometimes they're more efficient. But at the heart I always say at the heart of all issues in a fiscal department really comes down to one of three things. It's either people, process, or systems. And they are all interconnected, but it really comes back to when you identify problems, it's usually gonna be one of these three. And we are really gonna focus we're gonna focus on some of the people inefficiencies. But when we think about how to fix these problems, it really goes back to process and systems because for a few reasons. One, I've never found a nonprofit accounting department that is overstaffed. If you are working for one, please let me know. I wanna know how you got there. Number two, it's very hard to evaluate people when you have broken processes and systems. I talked to a lot of nonprofits and they're just like, I wanna evaluate my people. I wanna know if I have the right people in the job. But when you are passing so much paper through your office or your review process is 12 long or you're stamping every invoice is paid rather than using system. It's hard to evaluate the people when even with the best people, you still have a broken process. So I always say, let's identify the process and systems because those are usually easier to tweak. And then once you have good processes, good systems in place, your people will tell you a lot. And it's really just they'll tell you whether or not they're right for the job once you have everything else working. So I always say, focus on your process and systems. Those are gonna be the easiest things to change. So what is the impact of inefficiencies? And really getting to it because we can say my department's inefficient. We only close in fifteen business days and I'd rather it be ten, but, like, what is that lasting impact? And when you think of what is the impact on people, I say a lot of nonprofit accounting departments, I always describe them, a lot of them, as slow moving ships. You get where you need to go. You finish those audit. You get those board reports out. You get the information that's necessary to funders. But there is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears behind those numbers. There's a lot of Excel pivot tables, a lot of overwritten formulas to get the numbers where you want them to be. And it just takes a lot out of your people, which leads that to that kind of resentment and kind of burnout. And especially at a lot of nonprofits where you haven't examined your processing systems, there's a lot of institutional knowledge in in people that are slowly becoming burnout and might leave. The other thing I say is as you develop process and systems, you will identify people who are resistant to change and that can lead to inefficiencies. Because if you bring in a new system or optimize your system or optimize the process and somebody's still doing it the old way because they don't wanna change, like I said, the people will definitely come out, and show it. What are process inefficiencies? It can be a number of ways. There can be it can be paper heavy. It can be relying on manual processes or old databases that are very expensive to upkeep, some custom scripts that have been written, or just quite frankly, overapprovals. I've been at nonprofits where the AP approval is six people long, And sometimes that is just too much and this was a housing nonprofit. So that was a utility bill that got paid every month. It still needed six people to sign off to keep the air conditioning on in the lobby of a building. So really thinking about where can we cut down on some of the things that happened, but make sure people are still getting the information they need. And then the system inefficiencies, and you'll hear this a lot. How much are you in Excel? Because with all the modern systems out there, if you are relying on Excel to do all of your reporting or all your analysis, something isn't working right. All these systems are designed to do reporting of the instincts. We've all if you're an FE user, you spent time time in the chart organizer setting things up. If you haven't and you're just dumping your trial balance into Excel, you're not efficient because the minute you dump something into an Excel, you open it up for human human error, formula error. I always joke. I think it was about I'm dating myself. It was about ten to fifteen years ago, TurboTax had a campaign. Calculations guaranteed. All that meant was one plus one was always gonna equal to it. It wasn't keeping you out of IRS jail. But what that really meant was it's systematized. If you give us the right information, it's gonna spit out the right result. Excel is not that way. So when we think about system inefficiencies, when you think of AI of 15 Excel files, something's wrong. And that leads us into the first poll question of the day. I think Sarah is gonna launch, and I'm gonna take a sip of coffee. So really which side when you look at your organization, where are you struggling today? Is it the people? Is it the processes? Is it the systems? Is it a mix of what I is is a lot of what I see? If it's a, an other, tell us in the chat. I'd be interested to see what if something falls not into these three categories, but really just get a sense of where people see their issue. And not surprisingly, the early results, it's a mix. And I really think it is and sometimes and we'll get into it. It's hard to identify, really which one is really causing that problem. Really having to peel apart the process to really get to the heart of where the problem is. And that poll stay up for a little bit. If you're looking for CPE credit, make sure you answer. We're gonna continue on. The share button isn't working. Sarah, I'm not able to go back to the slides. I can see it. Oh, you can see it? Okay. I can see the poll. Okay. Just making sure. Alright. So how do you recognize inefficiencies in your finance operations? So when I when I sat down to do this, I was thinking about, really, when I go into an organization and talk to them about where their problems lie, what are those common frustrations? And once again, we're gonna start at Excel, the spreadsheet challenges that you have 20 tabs that you're hoping everything works. The example I always give is during COVID, I was at a nonprofit, and we were pretty much budgeting every other day. Removing this from the budget. What if we put this in? How does what if this funder drops? What if this program fails? And my budget spreadsheet was 20 tabs that came together in this very nice summary sheet with all these KPIs, charts, everything. But it was relying on 20 tabs that hopefully all came together. And all I gave my CFO every day when he asked for something was the summary sheet. And I remember him one day asking, hey. Can I get the detail? And I just flat out said no. Because no one should see what how the sausage is getting made at that organization just because I was budgeting every day. But I had problems with spreadsheets just because I was in Excel. And also at that point, I was overworked as most people were in the beginning of COVID. But had I had a system to budget it, it would have been much cleaner and much more thorough in what I was doing. Second one, we think about version control issues. And I I I run into this a lot with nonprofits is you close the books, you issue funder reports, but then you made a you made a edit to the the month. And then the funder asked a question, so you pull that GL again just to to detail, and it doesn't tie back to the report. Or you have your Excel budget that's labeled budget version 22 final version v one seven PM Andrew review. We've all had the Excel file like that. When you really get to that when you have those types of things and you have 16 different versions of a file, you're really running into that version control and just how do you know you're in the right one? Maybe somebody updated something, especially as most of us are on a Google Drive or a, Microsoft OneDrive that multiple people can edit. It's just it can get out of hand of who made an edit. I know when I was budgeting this year with my executive director, there are multiple times I would just get an email. I messed something up. Can you just restore the previous version? It happens. Next one. Like, what is your team morale within your fiscal department? And I see this one of three ways of the warning sign. Kind of the first sign is people just seem unhappy. That's the easiest one. They seem frustrated. They seem unhappy. It's very visible. I think the second one is they don't seem unhappy, but there's kind of this resignation that it's never gonna change. And I I've worked I've worked with an organization where they especially an AP clerk that they went from when she started, they had about a 100 bills a month. They were doing about 800 bills a month, and everything was still manual. It was still on one person. And she had tried to change things for years, couldn't get there, and just had given up. Like, this was her job. She would complain every once in a while, but just knew nothing would change. And I think, to me, that was a sign of inefficiencies because it's just if nothing's ever gonna change and people have resigned themselves to that, it's a problem. The other, team morale that I would look out for is and I am just as guilty as that. If somebody being maybe too optimistic, especially in an accounting team, because sometimes they'll just go too far the other way publicly. And it just it to me, when there's those frustrations and somebody's either miserable or way too happy working in an accounting department, those are reasons that I would start peeling back those processes and systems and see what's wrong. And I think it's also, like, what is that path to improvement? Because I think sometimes we also get so bogged down in that day to day that thinking about making that change can be really overwhelming and stress a lot of people out when you think about, okay, we're gonna change up the process. I'm working with an organization right now. We're bringing on a an accounts payable automation system. And listen, no path is no change is linear and there's gonna be bumps in the road, there's gonna be problems, but there is just I can feel as we have the demos, as we have the the learnings and the trainings, there's just a resistance to change because they've been through changes that haven't worked, and you can just tell they're just like, this isn't gonna work. We're going back to our process in a month, so I'm really not gonna listen. So really looking at what is that path to improvement. And if people are resigned, then it's never gonna happen. They can get really frustrated. And once your people start getting frustrated, that's where everything falls apart. We're on the next slide. So this is where I really think about when we think about those inefficiencies, this is what I would call the smoke alarm. And really, before a fire happens, when I'm thinking about where those inefficiencies are, what what are the bottlenecks, what's causing the problems, where is their smoke? Because where there's smoke, there usually ends up being fire. So these are a few things that we've talked about some of them, but really reoccurring errors. And I always think about it. When I have when I have staff that I've worked with for a while, I usually know where they're gonna make errors because people usually make the same errors. And have they adjusted or has it has your process open to it? Does your process have checks? I like I said like I showed in the beginning, AI is not ready for prime time in certain instances. And nothing in this world, especially in the accounting world where the numbers have to be correct because people are making very high leverage decisions often. Are there checks and balances? Where are you checking the numbers before it goes out? Are you checking to make sure that it's even just a reasonable sometimes just a simple variance analysis of your statement of activities can reveal so much. Another one to hit on is communication breakdown. Are you if you're a CFO or a controller or a director of finance or just a top financial person, have you ever sat in that board meeting and had another department present financial numbers that don't match what is in the finance presentation? To me, that's an inefficiency because they're pulling their own numbers. And usually, then the organization just looks like it's not together and making decisions together. And I always say the biggest one will usually come between development and finance. And I always say, development and finance usually are going to have different numbers just because they're usually different way they measure them or, you know what, if I have lunch with somebody and they said they're gonna give me a million dollars, development's gonna have that as a pledge. Finance isn't recording until something's in writing or signed. But as long as you can identify what those differences are, I think it goes a long way. Making sure you have that communication that I think ten to fifteen years ago in a nonprofit, finance could really be this tight knit group that kind of didn't let people in. And with all the information, all the systems, everything changing so quickly, having that interdepartmental communication is so key to make sure everybody's on the same page, and we'll get to there's there's efficiencies that can be gained just by talking to each other. So that brings us to our second poll question. What is the number one issue your team faces? And, they we did not put all of the above, which I'm sure some of you would put having spoken to some of you over the years. But it's really where where can your where would you fix today? If you had that magic wand, I always say when I do an assessment, I always end with the same question. It really is. If you had a magic wand, what is the first thing you would change? And I've been doing this for a lot of years, and I've interviewed a lot of people. I've only had two people ever say I would just want a bigger paycheck, surprisingly, because that's that would be my answer at certain points in my career. But really where would your thing and I think seeing here is kind of some of that workflow delay delays, communication breakdown, overloaded staff. To me, those are all kind of some of the same, and it really comes back to how do you go about fixing it, and how do you identify where to start? So as that poll's wrapping up so really, as I said, we're not gonna focus as much on people for the rest of the presentation just because people's a whole another ballgame of identifying it. But like I said, you can really look at the process and technology pitfalls process, and seeing seeing how I can go about fixing this. So what are some process pitfalls? When I think about I am very big when I go into an organization and talk to people, mapping out the process in a flowchart. Really thinking about, okay, hitting my start button and the invoice is mailed to the organization. What does that process look like before it gets paid and applied to a grant even taking it a step further? So really, can I get through that entire process with all the questions, all the approvals without looking at my finger? Because sometimes mapping out a process on paper, you can identify places where, you know what? We have duplicate duplicative effort. We have too many approvals. Things slow down. And sometimes when you talk about a process and you've done it for years, you don't realize how inefficient it is till you have a flowchart that's three legal sheets of paper wide. So really thinking about, okay. Let's take a look at my processes. Do you have inconsistent procedure? I talked to a lot of nonprofits, and this is really hard. And I saw it in the chat somewhere of kinda this does hinge a lot on management and making sure there's buy in. Do we have a process for 90% of the organization when they need funder reporting? But you know what? This one department, because this person's been here for twenty years, they have their own process. And once one person has a different process, the entire process will fall apart. So and this comes back to kind of that communication, and any of these fixes need to be a team effort. And then there's a fine line between a team effort and having too many cooks in the kitchen. But I think having a standardized process where everybody does things the same way not only helps your finance team because, you know what, it makes it really easy to have standard operating procedures, makes it easy to train people because you say, here's the process, here's the flowchart, Let's go. It allows your people to take vacations because you don't have to say, okay. For 90% of people, we do this. For Samantha, we do this on the side. And making sure they know because we don't wanna anger Samantha. So really and it comes back to that. When you think about that those process pitfalls, mapping it out can have so much benefit, and there are tools out there, that can help you do that. But even in Excel, just going one, two, three, four, five connecting the lines, like I said, a a good flowchart can reveal so much, about what's going on and just seeing where you know what? Do we have too many approvals? And you know what? This process is great, but it stops right here because we wait for development for four days. Well, you know what? Let's talk to development and see why we can't get that data sooner. And if we can't get those data sooner, you know what? Let's take our closed schedule and reorganize it. So maybe we're not waiting for four days. We're just gonna do that part later in the process and kind of take a step back and look at things a lot more holistically than maybe you're doing when you are in process. Because being in a process, it makes it very hard to take a step back and really look at those pitfalls. So thinking about how can I how can I take a step back and map these things out, I think is is a big and will help any organization do it better? And it also allows you to work with your entire team and really make sure you're getting every part of the process. Just because you're a CFO sitting there, you think you know your AP process, you're not gonna know exactly what the, AP clerk does, how they enter things. Have them pull up a Teams chat or Zoom, Zoom conference, share their screen, just record what they do one day. Just have it documented. I know I'm planning for a leave with my executive director. I literally made videos of everywhere I click when we need to do payments, when we need to do things like positive pay, and really making sure you've mapped out every piece. So as you go to change it as well, you've thought about the things that could go wrong. And I'm gonna address something in the chat because I see it coming up. It's really that interdepartmental jargon and leads to a lot of confusion. One of the things I learned quickly so I was in public accounting for about eight or nine years and then transferred to a nonprofit. And I can tell you my first six months, I struggled because no one else spoke accounting except my CFO. And I just didn't realize because I had just sat in an office with people for nine years where debits and credits for life, for better or worse. Some days it was worse. But I didn't realize no one spoke accounting. And when I would get asked for things, I'd have simple questions. To me, what were simple questions, but it would end up being, like, this huge thing with development. What I ended up doing is we sat down. I did three lunch and learns. The first one, I literally just sat there with our financials as and this was as development was doing annual reports and walk them through it and taught my development team kind of how to read the financials and how to get to the heart of it, like, to understand what these numbers actually meant because they were giving them the funders. So I was giving them the tools to talk about it. The next the next launch and learn, I literally sat down with the development and I did this with the director of development. We sat down with the development board report and the finance board report and kind of just talked about what what we are trying to convey and what the goals of these reports to the board were because that had a lot of data in there. And then the third one, what we did is we sat down and we said, here are the common terms based off these two meetings that we think we have differences, and we really just define them. We came up with a Rosetta Stone between the old way, the development way, and the finance way. And really, after that, it made things so much easier because we'd had still wasn't a common language, but at least we I knew where the pitfalls were and where I might have to change the way I ask for things or talk about things to really get allow the individuals in my development part department to understand and make things move a lot quicker. And I think part of that too when we think about these processes is really getting to the why. And you think of a process pitfalls, I think a lot of people in accounting, we have audits, we have funders, we have government entities. We answer to a lot of people. Everything ends up coming through accounting in one way, shape, or form. And I think sometimes there's some pushback from other departments because they don't understand a lot. And I have learned the hard way in my career that sometimes it's stopping to explain that why, why you're doing it, why I need this documentation with an expense. Why do I need the receipt when you take an Uber to your program? Because your funding comes from a state government entity, and they require receipts for every expense. So if you don't give me this receipt, we're gonna lose the funding, and we're not gonna have this program. And it can be harsh sometimes, and they're not always gonna understand, but but at least making an attempt to have them understand sometimes can soften some of these requests. So, really, what are the technology challenges? When I when I think about we think about process, now we're on technology. What can what can happen? One of the big ones in all cards on the table, I've met a lot of people that use at the NXT and this is a problem. Legacy system challenges. I've met a lot of people who are in Financial Edge that it was set up ten years ago, twelve years ago. Even though they migrated to FBNXT, the bones of their system and the way they've set up their account string and their project codes, it is legacy. It was three CFOs ago. It was two buildings ago. It was six different program initiatives ago, and it really does not do what they needed to do today. So how is the system set up? Is it set up for, a, what your organization does today and needs to report on today, and what you plan on doing for five years and ten years? And is the is the system set up to grow with you? And really, how are you going to be able to add programs and get better reporting? And the other thing I'd say is sometimes I've worked with organizations that have made that jump from, let's say, 5,000,000 to 20,000,000. Well, the reporting you need as a board for a $5,000,000 organization, it's different than a $20,000,000 organization. Maybe there's less detail. Maybe you need to be able to slice and dice the data in different ways. And thinking about how you're gonna need that data, and can you set up your system to give you the data you're gonna need rather than going, you know what? If I take some from column a, some from column b, some from column c in Excel, I can kinda get where I wanna be. Can you get it out of your system? And just sitting down with your board, with your management circle, with your management team, with your executive director and going, what do we truly need to report on? How can we do this better? It can really allow you to think about that holistic. If you're gonna make a change to your chart of account, to your departments, to your project goals, let's think about it holistically because I know a lot of the financial ed users I talk to, they're also on razor's edge. So any change they make kinda has to work hand in hand with development. So I think thinking about how we can make these legacy system challenges, think about what doesn't work today to move forward. The next one, and I've seen some of this in the chat as I'm reading on the side as I present, underutilized software features and especially financialized. I get the product updates. I'm a nerd. I read all those. I attend every program update. I I know Sarah gets emails from me when things don't make sense. I'm very active. Not everybody is like me. I understand that. That's why I do what I do. But does your organization know what the system can do? Maybe maybe you implemented Financial Edge NXT two years ago. It's a completely different software today, all the stuff they've added to the web view. Do you even know what it can do? Have you used the dashboards? Do you use payment assistance? Are you using the credit card? Thinking about all the things that are available that I know about, maybe you don't. I always say here, when you think about, I don't know what my software does, that's where I always say, call up your rep, whoever your sales rep is. Just ask for a demo as if you're a new customer. The amount of things you sometimes learn just seeing the system and use the way it should be, it's it's like, oh, the system can do that. We use seven Excel files, and we had just set this up a little differently, and we can do that. We can do everything in the system. So thinking about how do I figure out what's available? And it's one of the things I really push for since I've kinda moved out on my own is, how can you get the most out of what you're paying for today? I also work at a nonprofit. I have a budget. I'd love all the bells and whistles from certain softwares. I'm never gonna afford it. So okay. Based off what I have today, can I set this up, or can it do what I need it to do just based off what I'm already paying for? The other thing is take a look at your invoice. Is there a module you're paying for that's maybe extra that you're not using? Are you paying for some sort of dynamic allocations? Or, you know what, in my payroll system, I'm paying for a GL interface that's never been set up. That's a $100 a month for three years that's gone down the drain. Well, let's set that up before already paying for it. So thinking about where those software features might exist, there's two easy ways figuring out. Your invoice, it's fast for a fresh demo. You never know what you don't know. And the other thing where a technology challenge really comes in is that integration gaps and systems. How are you moving? Are you in an all in one platform? My Financial Edge talks to my Razor's Edge. Everything else is done at Financial Edge. Great. Or are you in a integrated systems environment where you have multiple systems that are much more user friendly for certain things, but you're bringing everything into Financial Edge and how are those integrated? Is it is it actually integrated or are you importing exporting? Are you relying on a manual process, that relies on one person? The the example I always give in my last nonprofit, we were using a an expense management system. And the way it had been set up with our accounting system is that me, the controller, every Monday, I had to click a button to resync all the data. Now for three and a half years, every Monday, I clicked that button. When I left, that was not part of my 25 page exit memo because I just forgot I did that, but it was a I would call it an integration gap because it relied somebody manually kicking a button. And it took them three months to finally ask me, how did you do this to go? Oh, I just clicked the sync button every Monday morning. And just thinking about where where are our systems not talking as APIs get rolled out for that they're even better. There's companies that work just to make sure your data is integrated. How can we not have that rely on our accounting team and make sure that's automated as best we can? So so we think about this. How do I identify the difference between a process problem and a technology problem? Because sometimes they kinda go hand in hand. And how do I identify where what I should do and where the real key is? And I think part of it goes back to let's map out the workflow. Let's talk through it. Where does the problem and inefficiency lie? Is it that is there a report that requires six different systems to come together and we're always waiting on this department to get their numbers in and this department to get their numbers in? Or is it the fact that, hey. The way I've set up my financial edge, I'm really using project codes, and then I've combined these seven project codes to get this program and this, but it's not set up in the system. So I really have to put everything into an Excel. And then if I add a new project code, you know what? I have to redo my entire Excel. That's a technology issue. If data is coming from too many departments, that's a process issue. So sometimes taking a step back and really mapping out the process and going, okay. Where do we get stuck? And circling the steps where things get stuck can really get to the heart of where the issue are what issue is and really help your organization kinda think about holistically, how can I do this better? Where where am I failing? And really get to the heart of what your problems are and how to do it better. And I think part of this, and I saw it somewhere in the chat is asking why you do things. I have gotten past this. When I first started consulting, the most frustrating thing to me is when I would go into an organization and I would they would show me what they're doing, and I would ask why, and I would just get a blank stick. The example I give is when I took over here to the avenue committee, I asked the former the the person I took over for who had been here for twenty five years. We have multiple entities because we're in affordable housing. And I think we have a lot of money moving back and forth between entities. They were still printing out checks and walking to the bank and deposit them between entities when it's all on the same banking interface, and you need to transfer funds? And I asked why, and I didn't get an answer. I kind of got a very long winded way of saying, this is the way we've always done it. It. And think about it. I had a printed he would print a check, he would sign it, walk it over to the executive director's office, wait for her to be available to print a check, and then deposit it. When I can just go on the banking website and transfer money between accounts. And just thinking that has saved us days in processing, days in filing checks, days in keeping making sure things get signed. But getting back to that why and getting passed out, this is why how we've always done it. Well, maybe somebody showed you. What did they show you? And maybe there is a reason. I've worked I was I'm working with an organization where they have a lot of cash sources coming for a diff from different places. And I think the person who handles that, because there's six different systems that's coming into you, has a very manual spreadsheet they update every day to make sure all the cash going into the bank account matches what's coming from the system. And it was just why? Why are we doing it this way? And it was just like it's hard. When something goes wrong, it's hard to identify where it went wrong. And one of the example one of the the remedies I gave is, hey. Let's take a step back. Why don't we open separate bank accounts for all these sources? And then, you know, once a week, we'll sweep it into a general operating account. But that way, we can trace the money coming in a lot better, and you don't have to sit on this every day. And really, I think part of this is also taking a step back and talking to other people. Talking to more people in your organization about what they're doing. Talking to more people that, about how things are working, where the problems are. Tracking those error patterns, I think, can really get to the heart of what the problems are and really thinking about and sometimes it's it's bringing in fresh eyes, whether it's new staff or a consultant to just kinda sit with you and talk with you. I spent a lot of organizations just spending a half day. Let's talk through your problem. Even sometimes somebody from the outside just, like, really hammering home something that doesn't make sense can sometimes open the open a world of possibilities because sometimes you ask that question internally. Why do you do this? What's the way I've always done it? There's not really much else you can go without kinda pressing. Sometimes that outside voice can press a little more. So thinking about that. So I saw it in the chat. How do you prioritize when everything is inefficient? And it's a it's a problem. I can tell you as a consultant, it's a very easy problem. It's just, hey. Let's lift out the project, and then you can decide what to do. But, obviously, I sit here as a CFO also having my own list of problems, wanting to do everything, wanting to do it better, and having to prioritize. And I always say, okay. Let's look at the projects we have. Once we've identified kinda where the building blocks are, where the problems are, How can I prioritize what I'm doing? Where should I start? And sometimes it's, do I wanna fix this low hanging fruit, or do I really wanna go after this big project and how to do it? The example I always give, there's a lot of organization I go into. One of the most manual process I see at nonprofits is that accounts payable process. It's all paper. It's just very slow slow moving. And it's usually one of those things that say, hey. We can automate this easily. There's so many there's AP automation within FB. There's so many other companies that do AP automation well. And how can how can I do this better? And a lot of them go, there's so many other problems. I don't wanna fix this. But I always say sometimes, hey. If you fix this, you're gonna free up time and you're gonna free up mental capacity for your people to do more things and you can handle some of those bigger projects. But I always say when when when I do an analysis, kind of a road mapping analysis, it's really measuring on a few things that we'll talk about on the next slide, but it's really the size of the project, the impact, and the cost. And thinking about it's kinda mapping those all on a altogether in a road map and just going, okay. What needs to come first? And sometimes, okay. What's gonna be sometimes it's that low hanging fruit. Are you new to the organization? You know what? You're you're like, you know what? Let me take on a a little project, prove that I can do that change management piece, and really move forward with it. Or you know what? Things are so broken that we just need that big project because there's so much that can come for it. One of the things I say is identifying what you want out of the projects. What are the goals? If we're gonna change our chart of accounts to get better reporting, well, what are the goals of that? Is it is it reporting? Is it that I want to be able to get things into the system faster? Is it that it just doesn't work for ad hoc reporting? What are the goals of each of these projects? And now let's see. Are some interconnected? Are some, away? I I can tell you another example. I was working with an organization, and they had brought us in because they needed a new financial system. Theirs is being sunsetted, and they're just like, we wanna do an analysis. We wanna figure out what we need and then embark on that selection process. So we came in. We did our our road mapping project, our our, assessment. And within a few days, we realized they didn't have a full working HR system. They were working out of Excel and various like, they had a payroll processing system and a benefiting system, but everything was manual. And we had to go back to the CFO and go, yes. You have a two year clicking ticking clock on your on your accounting system, but you need an HR system first. A, because it impacts every employee. B, you're getting bad reporting to your grant funders. And, c, it's just such a manual process that there's a giant risk to the organization the way you're doing things today. And we actually ended up back burnering a little bit that accounting system project, got them an HR system, and then embarked on that. And it was one of those things without the outside view coming in, it really they would've embarked on the project, but not not seeing how to do everything. So I really think it's how best to go about it and and really road mapping those things together. So I know it's been asked in the chat a few times. Actually, before we go on this slide, I'm just gonna launch the third poll question, If you don't mind, Sarah, so I don't miss it. Man, I caught her off guard. So really thinking about when you're prioritizing a project, which factors should you consider? And we'll get into some of these, but you can see cost, size, risk, or all of them. And, obviously, there there kind of is a correct answer here, and I know a lot of nonprofits, unfortunately, a lot comes down to cost. You can have the biggest riskiest project. It's gonna affect everybody, and it's gonna get denied because of cost. And that is unfortunately something we all deal with in the nonprofit world. But I think thinking about how to prioritize is key. So let's think about where are some places to start? Going back to okay. Let's think about this way. Are there features of the software we are paying for today that we don't use? Let's figure that out. Let's look at our invoice. Let's get a fresh demo, and let's think about what we're not using today because maybe there's a way to easily implement some of these modules, and there's a lot of, going on in the chat about different things the software can do and some outside software. How best to do it. And I'd say this is especially something when you think about some of these add ons, some of these other companies, even within FE, there's so much out there that can be done that it can be overwhelming. I always say talk to people who have used it. Talk to listen. Part of my job is to sit on various demos. I've seen it all. I've been through so many implementations, and these these companies will offer you the world. Then when you get into implementation, it's not there. So make sure you've done your homework. And I know we've talked there's a webinar in the past. We've talked about how to really make those changes. Then let's let's prioritize projects by risk, size, and cost. And way the way I usually do that, is kind of like a bubble chart. We're gonna have we have our x and y axis that is sometimes cost and risk, and then the size of the bubble is gonna be effect on the organization. So really thinking about what is that intersection of size, cost, and risk, and how do we go about really mapping it out. And then the other thing I would remember is change is not linear. And I always say even with the best change management and the best project management, your change is not gonna be linear. It's still gonna have your ebb and flows. But with the proper planning, the proper change management, the proper project management, what it does is it smooths out those peaks and valleys where it becomes more of, like, a rolling hills rather than an extreme game of chutes and ladders and really thinking about that. And when you're thinking about this change, it's being upfront with your the people who are involved in that change. It's like, you know what? Things might go wrong. You know what? You might we're gonna change the roles and responsibilities. You might run into a case of this isn't working. That's okay. There's gonna be an open line of communication. We're gonna be able to troubleshoot it. We're gonna we're gonna work together to make sure this works. This is really a lot of teamwork in these big changes. And I think when you think about where to start, let's document where time is being lost. Ask your people to just come up a list of what frustrates you. Where where are you losing time? What do you feel like is just I always say, and I I the article I wrote before this, it's the key phrase is if you've ever thought there has to be a better way, there probably is. Now can you afford it? Do you have the resources to do that? I don't know. But let's take a step back and see if we can figure this out, document where time is being lost. Sit down with your team, have a brainstorming session, get lunch, get breakfast, get get cake at the end of the day. Whatever is gonna get your team talking, let's speak about what does and doesn't work. And I think the key here is also including what does work. Because when you think about process and system changes, you don't wanna throw everything out. You really want to figure out where those key pain points are, but not throw out what's working. So I think it's key to make sure these conversations don't go too far into the this isn't good, this doesn't work. And the last piece is is make it a collaborative effort. Now don't go too far. The the old saying is a, horse by committee is a camel. Make sure that you have the use those resources. Make sure there's a decision maker that everything's not open to a vote, but get those voices in there. Make sure people feel part of the process. And as you're rolling things out, talk through what the process is. Make sure you're not missing something that your program needs and really thinking how to do it. That brings us so we've we've talked I've talked a lot in the past fifty two minutes. You're asking my wife. I've talked way too much. But how do you take that first step? And really shifting that mindset to we wanna change. And I think that's very hard for a lot of our finance and accounting teams because that's gonna involve a lot of extra work. Just being honest that I feel a lot of accounting teams are really overloaded. So thinking about that shift to action and change is gonna involve some more work. But the goal at the end of the day is to make your life easier and really making sure that at the end of this, that you are gaining those efficiencies, that you have that real project goal or project charter and those goals, and you're coming back to them throughout the process. Thinking about that integrated framework, how does changing one process affect all your other processes? How is this gonna change? And the other thing to think about is, what potential is this really gonna unlock? What else are these changes? Because sometimes the changes might not be as overt and really clear cut that, like, hey. This is gonna save this person time, but you know what this is gonna do? This is gonna the the example I gave is like I said, I'm implementing a payable system for a client. The the unsung benefit of this is when they have vendors calling their program people why they got paid, rather than have to email accounting and then wait for accounting to get back to them. The system they've chosen, they're gonna have full access to view where things are in the queue and whether or not they got paid. And it's really going to allow their people to have better vendor relations and get better service. And it's not something they thought about when I'm like, you need an APSIS APM payment system. So just kinda shifting that mindset and just the the the best advice I can give is just find somewhere to start. Because once you prove that, hey. This change is gonna help, people will jump on board and people will wanna help. So we already have some questions, so this is me. If you are I know there's a lot of talk about different systems, whether they integrate, what's best for my, my nonprofit. I always say, especially nonprofits, every one of you does things so uniquely that there isn't a right answer of what's gonna work. What works for one nonprofit with the same program isn't gonna work for yours. So if you ever have any questions, like I said, it's in a lot of demos. I am certified in EPI. I'm certified in RE. I can bounce around every platform. More than happy to talk through anything and help with any of these problems. Also, if you don't need my help, I appreciate it today. Any donations to my nonprofit will thank my executive director for letting me take the time. Before we get to question and answers, anything from you, Sarah? Yeah. I'm gonna run through some of the items in the docs tab real quick for everybody. Go ahead and drop your questions in as I'm doing that, and we'll we'll get through those. So the first is there's a PDF of today's slides if you've not downloaded it yet and want this. The second is an ebook for what to do when you're facing a fund accounting mess, and it tackles some of the scenarios we chatted through today and looks at how you go through people, processes, and systems to balance that out and kinda troubleshoot. The next is our next session with Andrew, which is gonna be on August 12, so in just a couple weeks. I'm really excited about this one. Given all of the funding issues, that many of you are facing right now, we're gonna be talking about the idea of restricting to expand. So, when you have to narrow your focus and narrow your offering, how can that be a good thing, and how can that actually position you for growth in the future, and allow you to maybe say yes to mission critical things and, give you permission to say no to things that you've maybe not been able to say no to in the past. So I think that's gonna be a really good discussion. Andrew, hopefully, I did that topic justice there. No. I think you did. Yeah. Yeah. I I think you hit the nail on the head, so we're good. Okay. We're also gonna be doing a two part discussion on internal controls. So the first one is next Tuesday in a week on the fifth, and then we'll be coming back with a follow-up, for part two in early September. We also have a few links for, touring financial edge NXT, and we have that split up, based on your primary funding source. So if you're getting grants and contracts, you probably wanna see different things than someone who, primarily does fundraising. So you can register for the one that best applies to your organization. There's also a link to Andrew's website as well if you don't have your phone to scan his QR code. Alright. Let's get into questions. Okay. So this one's from Carrie. What suggestions do you have for getting leadership buy in? We can identify the projects, but like you said, if leadership doesn't align, it really doesn't matter. So there's multiple ways, and it kinda depends on I don't think it's some any tried and true. I think it's, really figuring out what your leadership wants to hear. Whether it's saving money, saving time, being able to give my the example I give I give them is leadership sometimes it's, hey. We're gonna be able to get you reports this much quicker. And when you need these things that seem to take long, we're gonna be able to deliver these faster or have time for these ad hoc projects. And sometimes, it is about, hey. Down the road, we're gonna be able to save cost, time, and money. The example I give is with an AP system. We're gonna free up our AP card times who've been here twenty five years to actually do some of that vendor management and be able to pull, you know what? We have 20 programs. They're all spending at this one office supply vendor just with different accounts. Let's get it on one one account, and maybe we can save some money and get some bulk discounts. That really thinking about those creative ways to save time and money that might not be evident. Hey. We're gonna put we're gonna make it easier for our employees to enter their time So those people in the health care clinic aren't sitting there on the iPad for fifteen minutes a day, painfully entering a time sheet. And they're gonna be able to clock in and clock out easily, and it's gonna integrate right to our, payroll system. So I think it's sometimes it's getting creative and telling the right story. Yeah. If there's anything else. Alright. I did get one from James asking about you're all set with polls for CPE. I will open some up in the background just if you're interested in working with Andrew. That'll pop up in the polls tab. Yeah. I I think a lot of this is just the goal of all of this, I always say, because people get scared when it when you start talking about efficiencies and making things better. Like I said, it goes back to especially when you think about nonprofit finance teams, never been overstaffed. So the goal is to make people's lives easier and take I know a lot of these accounting teams just work over are overloaded, can't take vacations, just feel like the world is slowly closing in on them. The goal of these things is to really make their jobs easier. The goal of everybody is to have your feet up on a Friday afternoon having a margarita or a drink of your choice. So really that that's what it is. It's not it's not to eliminate positions. It's not to work people out of a job. It's to really put people at their highest and best use. And that's how I approach all of these conversations. Yep. Alright. Jameson, can we get a webinar on the best practices for utilizing the grants module? I will check-in with the team about that. That's a great idea. And, Miranda sent you a resource to help with that too. But, yeah, we'll we'll, we'll get that over to our team. Alright. Well, we'll let everybody go because we're out of time. Andrew, thank you as always for a great discussion. It's a lot to pack in in an hour. I appreciate it. No problem. Thank you, everybody, for taking the time. I appreciate it. Alright. Hope everybody has a great rest of your day. We'll see you soon. Bye.