Accounting for charities and not-for-profits

The Diocese of Arundel and Brighton’s finances are transformed by consolidated Cloud accounting

In 2018, The Diocese of Arundel and Brighton began a digital finance transformation initiative with AccountsIQ. It was a highly ambitious project involving complex workflow automations. There were also multiple stakeholders, including around 70, mainly volunteer, users with varying levels of accounting and IT experience.

The Diocese had been using a stand-alone finance system, called Finance Co-ordinator. “It had a good Chart of Accounts,” Sarah recalls. “But no consolidation function. At the end of the year, each parish would send in their activity and finance would re-key the transactions.”

These manual processes were time consuming and error prone. More importantly, the only management information the Diocese had was a P&L and balance sheet for each parish. “There was no granularity,” says Sarah, “the old system didn’t give us the insight we needed at individual parish level.”  

In search of a more advanced cloud system, Sarah talked to AccountsIQ’s CEO, Tony Connolly, and the finance team from the Archdiocese of Dublin, who were already an AccountsIQ customer.  

“AccountsIQ is Cloud-based, so I can access the parish books and see what’s going on from the centre.” 

Sarah Kilmartin, COO, The Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton.

Moving to AccountsIQ enables automated, efficient processes  

The Diocese of Arundel and Brighton chose AccountsIQ because they wanted to be able to share a single platform with their parishes. Their objective was to automate as much of their manual finance processing as possible.

Digital cash collection is an example of an effective process that AccountsIQ created specifically for the Diocese.  Income from each church is entered on an online cash collection sheet, which updates directly into AccountsIQ. This means income is recognised directly on entry and can be consolidated across all parishes. Crucially, Sarah’s team didn’t simply replicate their previous, paper-based cash collection process into AccountsIQ.

“We combined a number of processes,” explains Sarah. “Now, it’s quick, easy, and error proof with no re-keying, sending emails or putting things in the post. I also look after a small parish as a volunteer and the monthly bank rec takes less than 15 minutes.

Sarah also likes the useability of AccountsIQ, “The most useful feature for me as COO is having all my parishes laid out in a list. I can click down to the transaction level detail very easily. I also have full trust in the completeness and accuracy of the data being captured; it accounts for every penny that goes through the bank.”

Granular reporting is revolutionising the church finance role

The Diocese is using AccountsIQ extensively for analysis and reporting.  Each parish has its own database in AccountsIQ, and the BI coding structure enables the Diocese to run reports for each church, fund, site or central office department.   

“This multi-dimensional reporting is perfect for our setting. It has revolutionised our potential to do our job here in the centre. That is to stand over these charitable funds and know exactly what’s going on with the funds of each charity.

“I find the management reports useful and look at them all the time. For example, when a new priest comes to a parish I can run through the P&L very easily. Previously, we didn’t have this level of information.”

Digital transformation is an on-going collaboration

After several years on the platform, AccountsIQ continues to work well for the Diocese. Sarah reports that they hit their year-end deadlines, with all parish accounts reconciled within two months. “Initially, we needed support to roll out the project,” she recalls. “But our users are now confident using the system.”

Looking back, Sarah describes this complex digital transformation project as a creative, on-going collaboration between the Diocese and the AccountsIQ team. “There are still things we plan to do,” she says. “For example, contactless payments have become mainstream since we started with AccountsIQ, and we need to find a solution that works for us. That said, whenever we bring problems to AccountsIQ, they understand them and help us sort them.”

“AccountsIQ is a product I would happily recommend to others. It has revolutionised how we do our job.”

Sarah Kilmartin, COO, The Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton

Summing-up, Sarah concludes that, now they have everyone working on one central Cloud accounting platform, they would never go back.

“We have fewer finance staff now, but they are more skilled. Our people costs may not have gone down, but the quality of what we know has gone up. We would certainly never go back to having 80+ desktop systems. Ultimately, AccountsIQ is a product I would happily recommend to others.”

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AccountsIQ and Enclude enable the Archdiocese of Dublin to go fully digital

The Archdiocese of Dublin is the largest Diocese in Ireland, with 197 parishes and funds under management that require reporting under new charity SORP regulations. The Archdiocese required an accounting solution that would meet their complex reporting needs whilst also providing a user-friendly system that parishes could easily adopt. This allowed a step-change away from paper, spreadsheet and bookkeeping systems. It was an ambitious project primarily due to the number of parishes and users and offering a good user experience was crucial in getting all the parishes digital and consistent in their processes.

The key requirements identified from the strategic review were:

• A highly secure cloud system with inclusive disaster recovery, upgrades and support in one service [SaaS]
• A finance system that is clear for Diocesan and Parish users to set up and easily adopt across the Diocese
• Consolidation of all 197 Parishes into a single reporting charity number was key which also facilitates a simplified internal and external auditing process
• Integration with a custom pastoral management system using API integration
• Extensive budgeting and reporting by department, fund, parish and project through a Business Intelligence layer [BI Layer]
• Systems integration capability to facilitate invoice capture, expense management, banking and approval workflow.

Following the strategic review and tendering process, the Archdiocese appointed AccountsIQ, partnered with Enclude, a non-profit technology consultancy firm, to implement a digital system to integrate pastoral management with accounting and provide consistent, consolidated reporting. 

Collaborative and personalised implementation

One of the challenges was the scale of the project. This meant the team getting to know all the people involved and creating a community-based approach to the project given the number of stakeholders involved. Ide Finnegan, Head of Finance and project director for the Archdiocese of Dublin explains:

Implementing AccountsIQ across all our parishes was a very significant project for the Archdiocese. There were challenges along the way, but we received great support from AccountsIQ throughout the process. It particularly helped that the implementation manager was also an accountant who understood what we were trying to do. This made the process much smoother.”

An integrated Salesforce solution

A seamless interface with the Archdiocese’s pastoral management system built in Salesforce was provided along with a custom cash collection form, built and deployed to allow parishes to easily lodge collections automatically into AccountsIQ with built in coding in accordance with SORP.  This allows a central view to manage funds for the assets of the various registered charities and the trustees to whom they report.  Essentially a simple capture method for the user, allowing complex reporting to be made more efficient.

Simplified consolidation across numerous entities

The Archdiocese required a consolidated financial reporting software across its 197 parishes and trusts. With numerous entities and a high volume of transactions, the consolidation requirements were complex. AccountsIQ’s simple to use, but sophisticated consolidation engine, enabled the Archdiocese to simplify the process by automating much of the consolidation and reducing manual inputs. It also simplified reporting for auditors through consolidated debtor and creditor reports. The Archdiocese is now looking to implement AccountsIQ’s automated accounts payable using OCR technology, the expense capture app and fixed asset register modules to further consolidate their processes.

Meeting the needs of multiple users

The Archdiocese of Dublin has 197 parishes and trusts each with its own Parish Finance Committee and unique user requirements. AccountsIQ understood the requirement for a flexible system that could meet the needs of a wide and varied range of users. AccountsIQ’s user-friendly features facilitated user adoption amongst parishes, particularly amongst users with less experience of Cloud accounting software. In this way, AccountsIQ offers a clear user experience at the front end, while enabling complex accounting solutions on the back end.

We realised early on that we had to offer an accounting solution to parishes that was more than a compliance exercise. With AccountsIQ we could offer them something more, an easy to use template for accounting that cut back on paperwork and saved time on manual processes. This efficiency has positively impacted uptake within parishes,” explains Ide.

A Cloud-led paperless approach to accounting

Cloud technology was a major factor for the Archdiocese in choosing AccountsIQ and Enclude. Previously they had used an on-site system (installed on PCs) which was impractical to roll out to each parish. The finance team recognised that the Cloud would dramatically simplify implementation and provide ongoing benefits for reporting and auditing.

AccountsIQ and Salesforce integrate seamlessly in the Cloud and use secure API technology to transfer data between both systems. This naturally provides an audit trail for donations and the ability to automate direct debit calls, auto-reconcile banks and prepare tax refunds for donations above €250 per annum from generous donors. The bespoke consolidated reports are all accessible through pinned electronic documents, thus cutting back on tedious paperwork.  This automated and paperless process also makes life much more efficient for the charity’s auditors.

The Future

AccountsIQ’s ongoing development and commitment to R&D means that the system is constantly evolving making it an accounting solution for the future. The Archdiocese anticipates that it will explore more opportunities to benefit from AccountIQ’s evolving suite of tools, particularly the expense module, accounts payable capture and approval, fixed asset register and open banking.

Ide explains:

One of the good aspects of AccountsIQ is that it’s constantly improving. The system we started with on day one has evolved significantly. AccountsIQ has delivered the best possible solution to the Diocese and Parishes and continues to release new features and functionality that make our systems efficient and compliant.”