The Christian and Missionary Alliance focuses on caring for suffering and overlooked people worldwide. The Ohio-headquartered nonprofit started in the late 1800s when one man started preaching to dock workers in New York City. Today The Alliance consists of 2,000 churches in the U.S. and 700 workers spread out across 70 countries.
Until recently, the nonprofit tracked its financials using a combination of Microsoft Dynamics GP for U.S.-based operations and QuickBooks for its international accountants. They were looking to replace both systems with one cloud-based solution. In particular, they needed a solution that could help them track by multi-currency fund and improve reporting.
Microsoft nonprofit software solutions
The Alliance looked at both Microsoft and Sage solutions. They ultimately stuck with the Microsoft tech stack. They chose Dynamics 365 Business Central combined with a nonprofit add-on by Tangicloud called Fundamentals.
This third-party solution, built directly on top of the Business Central platform, added the fund accounting piece that The Alliance needed. With Fundamentals in place, The Alliance could:
- Automate due to/from
- Associate bank accounts based on fund
- Close the year out by fund
- Report by fund
- Manage unrestricted and restricted funds
The Alliance continues to evaluate the Tangicloud add-on, which introduced additional technical issues into the project. Boyer’s team has helped The Alliance navigate these troubleshooting opportunities.
Benefits of Microsoft’s cloud ERP
When Director of Accounting Leah Tallman joined the organization, The Alliance’s main operations were already on Business Central. However, they still needed to add a secondary company for the Alliance Benefits side of operations. That piece went live May of 2022, under Tallman’s supervision.
“It seems like it’s going pretty well,” Tallman said of their new Microsoft nonprofit software solutions. She said Business Central is a very intuitive and friendly system to use.
“It’s a friendly platform. It’s very easy to export into Excel. You don’t have to have a lot of technical abilities to use Business Central,” she said. The integration to Excel in particular adds a familiarity that makes it easy for accountant-minded users.
Overall, the organization has 15 accountants who use the system globally. Tallman said there are definite benefits to everyone being on the same system. For example, they no longer have to wait for the end of the month to reconcile their global accounts. They can pull financial reports live from across the globe.
Tallman said reporting is critical because they’re very focused on the budget. It took some extra time and tweaking to get the right people visibility to their reports — and only theirs.
“That’s been one of the bigger hurdles they’ve had to overcome,” Tallman said.
They currently use Jet Reports to enhance Business Central’s built-in reporting. The add-on reporting tool is still in the early stages of development, but they expect it will offer them similar insights to the FRx reporting tool they used with Dynamics GP. Drill-down, interactive reports already let them dig deeper into the details of any transaction.
The fund accounting capabilities help them better track — and report on — individual funds too. The organization allows people to roll over funds from year to year, a process they had to track manually before getting on Business Central. Now they simply use project codes to track and report on those funds.
Timesaving efficiencies in Business Central
Two of Tallman’s favorite time-saving features are the bank import and account schedules. She said she’s saved at least half a day every month with the new bank reconciliation auto mapping.
“You just hit a button and 250 items are mapped. It’s a wonderful thing,” she said.
She also saved hours every month by setting up recurring journal entries. Now, instead of creating an entire new journal entry every time, she simply has to pop in the right dollar amounts and post the entry.
“I’m sure we’ve just scratched the surface on what’s available to us but, when you convert you’re just trying to keep your head above water. You don’t have time to look at all the bells and whistles,” Tallman said.
For now, The Alliance mostly uses cash receipts and Accounts Payable journal entries. They process a lot of donations and plan to integrate their CRM system more closely with Business Central in the future.
Fast Facts
Previous ERP: Microsoft Dynamics GP for U.S.-based operations and QuickBooks for international operations
Dynamics 365 Business Central Modules: General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Banking, EFT Processing and Multi-Currency for The Alliance; also Sales Invoicing and Accounts Receivable for Alliance Benefits
Add-Ons: Fundamentals (fund accounting) by Tangicloud
Biggest Timesavers: bank import and account schedules
