Time is money, and that holds true in the nonprofit and for-profit world. The less time your organization needs to spend on repetitive tasks, the more time it has to focus on achieving its mission and raising the funds you need to ignite change. The less time your organization spends hiring employees, the more time it has to focus on building a strong team for mission-achieving projects.
A fund accounting solution, such as MIP Fund Accounting®, grows with your organization. It helps you improve staff retention and quickly brings newly hired employees up to speed. Fund accounting automation streamlines tasks and cuts down on repetition.
How a Fund Accounting Solution Saves Your Organization Time
Repetitive, easily automated tasks take time away from what matters most. Fund accounting systems let organizations establish workflows and automate tasks, reducing the strain on staff. Automation and workflows do more than save time. They also relieve some of the burdens on your team, making your nonprofit a more desirable place to work.
There are several ways you can use a fund accounting solution to save time:
1. Create Executive Reports
Executive reports provide your organization’s leaders with concise details about its financial performance, marketing goals, and overall strategy. While reports are valuable for organizations, they can take the accounting team considerable time to prepare and distribute. Depending on the length of the reports, executives might not have the time to read them or digest their data.
The Executive View License module, available with MIP, reduces the time burden on your accounting staff. Executives can collaborate in the budgeting process and make decisions that benefit the organization.
2. Set Up Workflows
When you break your workflow down, it’s a sequence of tasks your team needs to complete to finish a task or project. Delegating and automating those tasks helps work flow faster to reach goals and meet deadlines.
An effective workflow provides the following information:
- A description of the task or job
- Who is responsible for the task
- The time needed to complete the task
Establishing workflows with a fund accounting solution helps your organization discovers the most efficient ways to complete projects and fulfill its mission. Fund accounting workflows streamline the process even further by automating steps.
Once a team member completes the initial task in a workflow, the platform moves on to the second team member. When that employee has added their contribution, the solution assigns it to the next person. The process continues until the end of the workflow.
Workflow automation keeps you from having to check in on employees to see how projects are progressing. You can simply check the workflow to see where the project is.
3. Automate Tasks
Certain accounting tasks need little to no human intervention. Using fund accounting software solutions to automate these important but tedious tasks save your team time. It also reduces the need for a large accounting team, which can be particularly beneficial if your organization has difficulty finding and retaining talent.
Some of the tasks you can automate include:
- Invoicing
- Purchase order approvals
- Account reconciliations
- Payroll
- Funds transfer
An added benefit of automation is that it reduces human error, saving even more time and reducing potentially costly oversights.
How a Fund Accounting Solution Improves Staff Retention
The workforce landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, and a shift to more remote work happened quickly. Even as employees return to work in person, many prefer to work from home, meaning remote work is here to stay.
The Great Resignation has altered the workforce considerably. It’s affected both for-profit and nonprofit organizations across industries. One report found 42% of nonprofit leaders expected turnover to increase, but few organizations had a retention strategy in place.
Using a fund accounting solution can help improve your organization’s staff retention rate while streamlining the onboarding process and enhancing overall productivity.
A cloud-based fund accounting solution allows organizations to continue embracing remote work. Many employees prefer the option of working from home at least some of the time. Using a fund accounting software solution your team can access off-premises means your organization can allow, and perhaps even encourage, a remote team.
Using a fund accounting software solution lightens individual employees’ loads. An accounting team member won’t have to sift through invoices or follow up on late accounts receivable. Knowing they can go to work each day and be excited about what they do and how they help your organization reach its mission keeps employees engaged and connected to their jobs.
Using a Fund Accounting Solution for Onboarding
You can’t always predict when employees will leave. A fund accounting solution that provides resources and support helps your organization quickly bring new hires up to speed. New hires can use the software to set up their payroll and benefits and review training materials. Your organization won’t experience that dip in productivity that often happens when one employee leaves and another one steps into the role.
How a Fund Accounting Solution Improves Efficiency
You’re likely to notice an increase in overall efficiency and effectiveness once your organization uses a fund accounting solution. The software takes the guesswork out of who is responsible for what, meaning everyone on the team knows which tasks are assigned to which employee or department.
A fund accounting solution lets your organization get things done faster by removing the need for human intervention for several tasks. Increased efficiency means your team members can focus on the big-picture items and their role’s responsibilities.
Finally, fund accounting solutions can reduce your organization’s hiring requirements by improving efficiency. You can thrive with a lean team while the software handles tasks you once had to hire an employee to manage, letting you save money by hiring fewer people and limiting strain on existing team members.
Your nonprofit can redirect the money you save by hiring fewer skilled employees into other areas of the organization, letting you work towards your mission more effectively with minimal overhead.
Schedule a Demo of MIP® Today
MIP® is a scalable fund accounting solution that grows as your organization grows. In addition to its basic functions, it has several add-on modules you can incorporate according to your nonprofit’s unique needs.
If you’ve been having difficulty retaining staff or attracting new talent, automating tasks through MIP® can reduce the need to hire more people to avoid overburdening your current employees. Adopting a fund accounting solution can also make your organization a more attractive place to work for existing employees.
Schedule a demo of MIP® today to see how it can transform your team retention.
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