As is true for many industries, nonprofit organizations have their own set of challenges. Generally speaking, they have fewer team members, operate under strict reporting requirements and must adhere strictly to a set budget. Closing the books or running financial reports can seem daunting. And as your nonprofit organization grows, you may find yourself in a dilemma. Your organization is too big for your entry-level accounting system, but you’re too busy to make a major change.
There are (Enterprise Resource Planning) accounting solution, and if you worry about the downtime involved with switching, you’ll be glad to know that thanks to modern cloud technology, you can be up and running in about half the time it takes to implement most on-premises solutions.
Seventy-two percent of nonprofits polled say they are glad they moved to the cloud and wish they had done so earlier. Here are some of the reasons they cite:
- Lower upfront costs
If you are in the market for updated ERP or are considering it for the first time, one important thing you should know is that cloud technology has enabled businesses like yours to get their accounting systems up and running faster and without the cost of maintaining your own servers and building your own IT team. There is no expensive hardware to purchase, no dedicated office space needed to house it, and no downtime associated with its installation. There are no expensive licensing costs. The cloud model allows you to budget a monthly subscription cost. You won’t need to worry about maintenance costs for an aging system, and updates and technical concerns will be dealt with behind the scenes by your cloud technology provider. Think of the time this will save your accounting team when they don’t have to wait for an IT team to fix problems. That means they can focus on what matters: helping your nonprofit organization accomplish its mission.
- Rapid payback
Because the upfront costs of implementation and ongoing maintenance are lower than for on-premises solutions, and because you’ll save more in the long run with reduced reliance on IT and reduced resources dedicated to manual processes, your nonprofit organizations should see the software pay for itself within the first year.
With an average payback period of just over six months and an ROI on average of 250%, you very quickly will be able to put the money you save back into the organization.
- Increased security
Your budget may be smaller than that of the Fortune 100 companies, but your need for security is not. Your nonprofit organization needs to be able to rely on security, privacy, and attention to details. Cloud service providers such as take their responsibility seriously and back up their word with guarantees to their customers, no matter the size. With a 99.984% average rating, Intaact has been in a way that your nonprofit could never do on its own. Because of the transparent, monthly pricing model, cloud providers know that they must maintain your trust month after month or risk losing your (and their) business. Here’s what Sage Intaact does to assure you:
- They spend millions of dollars protecting and backing up your data (transaction log backups occur every half hour and are sent to a disaster recovery data center every 2-4 hours; at worst, you would lose 4 hours of work).
- Data is backed up to tape and offsite locations daily.
- Multiple, redundant data centers are used so that even if one were destroyed, all the data would still be safe.
- They employ white hat hackers and bounty programs to search out potential weak spots so that they can be fixed immediately.
- Your data is completely isolated from email threats.
- They maintain a 24/7/365 watch of armed guards, as well as biometric security and intrusion detection methods to ensure no unauthorized persons can physically access your data.
Best of all, your data belongs to you and always will. This is all part of the one of the strongest, most customer-focused guarantees in the industry.
Next step
I hope we’ve shown you that there are compelling reasons to investigate an Intaact cloud computing accounting solution for your nonprofit organization. If you want to get more done in a shorter time with fewer man-hours, we can help.
and let us show you why cloud accounting is great for nonprofit organizations like yours.
By Express Information Systems
