What Are Nonprofits Struggling With Most Today?

Welcome to this episode of ISV Talks. I'm Carol Livingston of Dynamics Connections and your host of ISV Talks. And on this episode, I have Bill Dean from Accounting Systems Integrator. Welcome, Bill.

Thank you, Carol. Glad to be here with you. Yeah, thank you for joining today. Bill, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself, how long you've been working in the Acumatica space.

So my name is Bill Dean. I formed this company, Accounting System Integrators, back in 1991. So we've been in business for over 35 years. Originally started with Mass90 back in the DOS age.

And then in 1994, Windows products became available. And so we jumped on the bandwagon of Solomon Software. I know many others jumped on with uh Great Plains or even both. But we chose Solomon Software, was working with Solomon as a VAR, doing consulting, you know, selling the software, development services.

And then we kind of saw that Solomon was going to be sunsetting. They weren't really enhancing the product anymore. So in 2010, we decided to move over to Acumatica. And at that point in time within Solomon, we did have a product called Nonprofit Plus.

We had acquired that from an organization out of Maine back in 2005. And so our thoughts were that we were going to bring Nonprofit Plus into the Acumatica framework. And you know, back then and even now, a lot of people would talk about focusing, you know, get an industry that you can know very well and not be a generalist. And so I took that to heart.

I wanted to then focus on just nonprofits, moving the product from Solomon into Acumatica, brought a rich amount of additional functionality that we did not have under the Solomon software framework. So since then, we've been adding additional functionality, listening to our clients, listening to demos, listening to VARs about uh the needs of nonprofits. And so our goal for Nonprofit Plus within Acumatica, we only work within Acumatica, is to develop nonprofit functionality that was built from the ground up and that exceeds and competes very well in the ERP space.

So our you know competition being mostly intact or Net Suite, we wanted to make sure that we could compete and do very well against them. Fortunately for us, a number of VARs have competed and have won against both Netsuite and uh Sage Intact. So we're we're pretty excited about that. And we hope to continue to do that as well.

Exciting. Wow, I I didn't realize the company history where it came from with Solomon originally. Wow. Yeah.

So well, give us the basic description of your solutions because I know you have nonprofit plus. You mentioned that already, but tell us what else. Yeah. So why don't I just briefly describe a little bit of uh about nonprofit plus?

Yeah. Nonprofit plus, we built it around a couple key functionalities. One is uh fund accounting, of course, grant management. So we manage grants, also program management.

This can either be for managing actually programs within the organization, but also for departments. Okay. That can be either one. And then there's a encumbrance accounting where we're we're going to use the purchasing modules, requisition, requests, and and then also we have a budgeting component.

Within the grant module, we believe that this is our mainstay product. We focus on managing grants from pre-award to expiration. We can manage all financial activity as well as non-financial information. And we believe that our drawdown process is unique because it doesn't just manage reimbursement grants, but also the other type of grant processing, which would be revenue recognition, a restricted revenue release, fee for service, milestone grants.

And so we can process all of those either by creating AR invoices or other entries within that same drawdown process. Some other products that we do have are listed under our accuaddons.com website, things like advanced expense receipt, our distribution codes. And these are not only used just for nonprofits, but also for-profit companies as well.

We also have something called advanced import, helping you upload from a file into the different uh data entry screens. And then also we've got this product called Advanced Integration, which is we like to say the import scenarios on steroids. So lots of functionality where we can import lots of data either from a file or from an FTP site or from in many different uh formats other than the typical CSV and Excel files formats. Okay, that's that's good to know.

So more things than nonprofit plus. I know a few years ago when I met you at Acumatica Summit, you said, hey Carol, we're the product for nonprofit plus. But I was also attracted to that you had so many add-ons too to help enhance Acumaticas. Yeah.

Yeah. So over the years, you listen, you you try to understand what people struggle with. And we try to develop products that are easy to use and are straightforward and get the job done. And so as much as we can do a one-point button click as much as possible as we can, that's our overall goal, no matter what really product that we've developed.

Okay. Awesome. Well, with that, why don't you tell us the story of a customer that's been successful with your products and why? Sure.

Okay, so there's an organization called World Hope International. They actually can be found on a YouTube and also, I believe it's also on our website as well. But they were an organization that had a domestic United States presence as well as an international presence. And they had a single product in the US, but then a couple different products, QuickBooks being one of them for their overseas operations.

And they, it would just take too long, you know, 15 or so days to gather the information, bring it all into the US so that you can figure out where the organization was. And so what we were able to do is to provide a single source product, Acumatica, where they can not only manage their operations in the US, but also for international using multi-currency. And they found that within a single source, they were able to pivot, they were able to know what's going on in the same day that the activity is being entered.

Big benefit for them was the overprotection that we have within the product, which is comparison of actual to versus budget uh tracking, real time. They'll know on every transaction if they have budget available while they're doing their entry, either in POs, requisitions, journal entries, you know, whatever the data entry screen is. Okay. So how does it do that?

So we have something called a budget checker that's on every data entry screen. And within that budget checker, every line is checked based upon the account and subaccount that's being entered to verify and to present to the user if funds are available for this transaction. We have a little button called a budget checker that you can enter into and see all the different transactions that are going on in the system related to that combination and to be able to show you uh where the money has been consumed and if there's budget available.

Yeah, nice. Yeah, so we're excited about that. Yeah, that's that's really nice where it kind of prevents the overspending, right? You know, it's like yeah, absolutely.

Okay, well, great. Um, we have another company. Yeah, I could share another company we've got, another client uh called First Day International. They're really benefiting by our uh grant management.

They shared with us that it would take up to two weeks to perform uh the drawdown process. And today they're experiencing drawdown processing, which only takes a couple hours. So a huge amount of saving of time when they're performing their drawdowns, creating their invoices, and uh so forth on a monthly basis. Wow, two weeks a month.

Yeah. You turn around and do it again. Yeah, that's correct. So, next question What are some of the new things that you're working on to introduce that adds value?

So, a product that we actually just recently introduced is a product called uh Budgetmaster. And, you know, budgeting for nonprofits is a big deal. Yeah, their money is critical for them to know how much is remaining, you know, what's available. And so we've created this product called Budgetmaster that enables full-featured functionality for budgeting and forecasting.

It's a tool that enables nonprofits and for-profit companies to be able to budget in detail by employee with taxes and benefits, handling raises, allocations between departments or grants. Yeah. Can manage recurring expenses like telephone rent and allocating those to the appropriate, let's say, departments, managing revenue, let's say if they're coming in by inventory item with a customer, we can also manage that. And then for the end user, that is gathered up all together once it's processed.

And then you'll be able to see your full budget. You'll be able to go in there and modify, see details, make some changes. And there's also coding combinations to it as well. So you know what part of the process came from which part, so that users can quickly isolate or hone in on the activity that they're interested in reviewing.

And then, of course, just like in Acumatica, we've got the approval process so that people can approve and then the budget can be released into the whole system. Great. And they can add notes and things as they're doing their budgeting and what's for different items. Yep.

Yeah, yeah. And something, yeah, and something that we're actually just going to add into it is the ability to take last year's, copy it into this year, because a lot of the times organizations have the same kind of things going on all the time. Yeah. And so we can copy that in.

So if it took so much time last year, this year should be a lot, a lot less time. You still want your people, you know, to go in there and review it to make sure that your numbers are good and your descriptions and everything are good, but it can really be a time saver. Oh, that's huge, right? Like why not start with kind of a snapshot of last year, right?

Right. Oh, yep. Yeah, exactly. That's really nice.

Yeah. Well, any anything else that you're looking to add to the products or new add-ons? Yeah. So we do have a list of different functionality that we would like to add.

Something that we just recently and are actually still working on it, is I'm an individual that loves data. And I believe that people should have as much of their data that will assist them in running their organization. So we developed a migration tool we first started in with the Solomon software. So we migrate Solomon data from uh Solomon into uh Acumatica, and the modules that we include will be general ledger, accounts receivable, both invoices and payments, accounts payable, both bills and payments.

And then also with projects, project accounting and service series, and then also uh inventory. So we have actually done this and they're reviewing their data probably as we speak for three organizations at this point in time. So we're very excited what we have heard from their review so far, that the information is coming across accurately. And so we're we're expecting some good things to happen with this product.

Oh, great, great feedback, anyway, on what you have in the test phase. Well, that's exciting. I I didn't know that. So I'm looking forward to hearing more.

Tell tell me a little bit more about just your perspective, because it sounds like you've been in the originally Microsoft slash Solomon and then Acumatica, but just any perspective you have to share about really how customers or partners are trying to help their customers improve their operational efficiencies. Yeah. Well, I'll I'll focus on uh nonprofit plus. You know, we we work with a lot of nonprofits, and a lot of the reasons why they're coming to us is for efficiency, right?

Or they're working in spreadsheets and they get they got to get out of that. They want to stay in the system. So the primary functionality that people seem to like, just like the other organizations that I did mention, and that is managing grants. Our product provides strong processing to assist nonprofits for entering their activity with user restrictions, tracking that information through reporting of built-in inquiries, managing budgets, which I've already mentioned, and then processing the drawdowns with or without indirects.

The other component that we realize is really provides a great benefit is the encumbrance accounting. And this is where purchase orders are entered, requisitions, requests are entered. And at the time of before you actually enter into a relationship with your vendor, you're able to know at that point in time if funds are available for you to process. You know, one of the issues with not using purchase orders within Acumatica is by the time you enter in the accounts payable, you're under obligation to pay.

And so even though we do have a budget checking component within accounts payable, if you're over budget, the only possible thing that you you might be able to do is either amend the budget, move money around so that you do have money available, or change where you're actually going to be processing. So the ability to know upfront before you know you enter into that relationship with the vendor, ordering that product or that service to be able to know that you have those funds available to you, you know, that really makes things more efficient and gives everybody a lot of confidence that when they're entering their data, they're not going to be over budget.

Right. And they're going to know before they make that commitment with their vendor. So yeah. It's probably too late.

Yeah. Unfortunately, that is the case. You know, you have an obligation to pay, but we do have, I mentioned before, the the amendment process, which are able to move money around within your budget without changing the overall dollar amount of the budget. Yeah, so you can kind of move it from this bucket to that bucket if you have a flexibility to do that.

Yeah, that's correct. Yes. Nice. All right, thank you.

How about just kind of a wider question? You know, what trends are you seeing on the horizon, or just what are things you see being developed in the future? The kinds of things that we may be looking at, we're currently not in the CRM space, the fundraising space. That is really an animal by itself.

There's a lot of functionality, there's a lot of competition. But it would be nice to be able to have a one-stop shop within Acumatica where you'd also be able to do your fundraising, manage your donors and things like that. So I would say that that's probably gonna be an area that we're gonna seriously take a look at. Yeah, yeah, that's that's pretty huge.

We're like doing that dinner management process. So well, great. Just kind of wrapping things up now, Bill. Is there any kind of trend that you're seeing that's really driving partners or customers come talk to you?

Well, you know, we we work hard on our website to be able to compete at the information space. There's a lot of competition out there. We're spending money within our website that people can find us. There's also the Acumatica website where we're in the marketplace, and VARs can find us there.

People can also go to our nonprofitplus.net website, fill out a form. We can talk about often VARs come to us because they get a lead. Can we provide this functionality?

How can we help in and actually provide this lead and make it into a sale? So we're working with VARS constantly. We're also trying to communicate the one reason why we actually focused on nonprofit plus is because of an industry, right? When you're focusing on industry, you know that industry, you could probably demo without even preparing because of the knowledge that you carry.

And so if a VAR is looking for an opportunity to look at an industry and say, hey, you know, I'd like to dive into that. We'd really like to talk to those VARs so that we can help them become successful in a focus industry where really there's a lot of success that can be made there. Yeah, great. Well, thanks, Bill, for joining me today on this episode of ISV Talks.

I really enjoyed our conversation today. Yeah, really enjoyed it with you as well, Carol. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you.

If you want to reach out to Bill or the team at Nonprofit Plus or Accuaddons, here's Bill's contact information. Bill, do you want to go over that with us? Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

So you can contact me at wdean atasilc.com at the two websites that are provided, www.nonprofitplus.net, and then also www.

acuaddons.com. The accuaddons.com will be all of the products that we currently have available.

Uh you might want to just go in there. We've got some screenshots, some videos. You can read over some of the functionality. And I believe each website does have a form that you can fill out if you're interested in talking to us about uh the products that we have.

Or, you know, you feel free to go ahead and email me at my email address at wdean at asilc.com as well. All right. Well, thank you, Bell.

And we'll see you on our next episode of ISV Talks. Bye, friends. Thank you. Bye now.