When your nonprofit was first starting out, using a basic financial accounting system, or even Excel, was enough to keep your financials and fundraising straight.
But as you grew, the same financial accounting platform became harder and harder to do what you need. You spend hours trying to manipulate reports or enter data.
Does this sound familiar? If so, you’ve probably outgrown your accounting system – or are on your way to outgrowing it.
4 Signs You’ve Outgrown Your Financial Accounting System
Below are just a few signs that your financial accounting system is not keeping up with your nonprofit’s growth:
Using Multiple Systems and Databases
Using multiple systems and databases to manage your financials and fundraising can get really messy. It’s really hard to integrate all the systems, making it even more difficult to get accurate, real-time data points.
All the different databases can lead to security issues as well, as different people are logging in and out of the various programs.
Simplifying your many systems into one, robust financial platform will keep all your data in one secure location
Inability to Customize
Basic nonprofit accounting platforms can work for organizations who are just getting started. But as you grow, you’ll need to start customizing fields and reporting features to meet your own organization’s needs.
And if you’re unable to customize, or you’re performing a lot of workarounds to get what you need, then you’re not able to truly scale your operation.
Need for Better, Improved Reports
As you grow, your need for better, improved reporting becomes essential to your fundraising and accounting operations. How else are you able to show your Board of Directors and your donors how well your organization is doing?
If you’re unable to create the reports you need to show your nonprofit’s success, then you absolutely need to look for a more robust financial platform.
Even if you’re able to create them, but have to export to Excel to manipulate the data, you still need to look for a new financial platform. This is too much manual work, and will end up costing you more time and money the longer you continue to do so.
Quality reporting is must-have – and is a feature that should not be overlooked when looking for a new solution.
Not Enough Users or Having to Share User Accounts
An obvious sign you’ve outgrown your current system is if your accounting and fundraising teams are having to share user accounts to your financial platform.
Sharing user accounts is not a healthy practice and definitely isn’t something you want to do long-term. It’s really hard to keep your information secure or pinpoint vulnerabilities if multiple people are using the same username and password to access confidential data.
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If you’ve outgrown your current financial platform, it’s time to start looking for a robust tool that will simplify and streamline your ongoing processes.