Financial reporting made easy for NGOs

Thames Valley Family Health Team (TVFHT) provides primary health care to more than 160,000 patients through a network of 120 physicians. As the team grew, managing its accounts became more onerous.

The organization’s small accounting team input data manually to process, pay and track invoices — an approach that became unmanageable as the number of invoices tripled and then quadrupled over a two-year period.

Read Thames Valley Health Care Team’s story.

Like Thames Valley Health Care Team, today many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) face challenges in financial reporting. Budgets are often tight, determined by funding rather than fiscal performance. Government entities and grant makers enforce stringent requirements for reporting and data integrity, which nonprofit organizations must fulfill in order to maintain funding. And teams are often small, given the cost and difficulty of attracting accounting talent to not-for-profit organizations.   

Taking the pain out of NGO accounting

Automated accounting software can help organizations meet those challenges, offering an easy, low-cost way to deliver reliable financial reporting. Even if your organization doesn’t have the funds to hire a full finance team, automation technology can fill in the gaps, making reporting not just manageable but efficient and cost-effective.

What if you could eliminate the parts of financial management, oversight,  and reporting that your accounting team hates the most? Common pain points include:

• Time-consuming and manual data entry processes
• Difficulty in integrating and consolidating financial data from various sources
• High risk of errors and inconsistencies in financial reports
• Challenges in ensuring compliance with stringent government funding and grant reporting requirements
• Inefficiencies in tracking and managing expenses and donations
• Limited capacity to generate timely and accurate financial reports
• Strain on resources due to the need for extensive manual labor in financial management
• Difficulty in adapting financial processes to accommodate organizational growth and complexity
• Challenges in maintaining up-to-date and accessible financial records for audit readiness
• Inability to efficiently allocate resources and focus on strategic tasks due to burdensome financial reporting processes

Automated accounting software can solve these problems.

Key advantages of automation

Automation gives you a streamlined process for paying bills and receiving payments. It integrates this data seamlessly into reports essential for meeting government funding and grant reporting requirements.

With Plooto, all of TVFHT’s accounts payable and receivable processes were fully automated, giving the accounting team greater control and visibility into cash flow. More importantly, it freed up valuable time so that the organization could provide better support to vendors, partners, and organizations under the Thames Valley Family Health Team umbrella.

The team saved hours per month overseeing payments and realized significant cost reductions by eliminating paper checks. Reconciling accounts was quick and easy because Plooto automatically synced with Quickbooks. 

So how can automation improve your NGOs performance? Here are a few of the ways:

• Cost-effectiveness and efficiency: Automation saves you time and money, reducing the need for extensive manual labor and lowering operational costs. In addition to direct cost savings, an automated system frees your staff from rote, repetitive tasks, enabling them to focus on strategies that will enhance your organization’s effectiveness and impact.
• Scalability and growth: Automation systems can grow with your organization, handling more complex financial tasks as your needs change. This ensures sustained efficiency regardless of your organization’s size or funding.
• Enhanced accuracy and compliance: Automation leads to more accurate financial data. Accurate reporting is crucial for government funding, grant compliance, and donor transparency.
• Strategy and leadership: Automation transforms financial management beyond mere reporting, giving you the insights that support planning for future growth and allocating resources effectively.

What can automation do for you?

Automated accounting makes the financial work your organization already performs faster, easier and more accurate, but it can also enable you to implement new processes and procedures, such as:  

• Assigning payment approval authorities: You can set up your software so that payments require Board-level approval prior to processing. This practice ensures adherence to protocols and grants Board Members insight into the organization's financial disbursements.
• Diversifying payment execution: Automated accounting software can handle all forms of payments, including EFT/ACH, email money transfers, and physical checks/cheques. Approval notifications can be sent to Approvers via email, streamlining the approval process without the need for physical signatures or chasing Directors down.
• Controlling access with user permissions: You can modify user permissions to guarantee that only specific individuals have access to relevant functions and data, enhancing account security.

Automation is a strategic necessity

The streamlined accounting has been a major factor in Thames Valley Family Health Team’s ability to grow, bringing more healthcare organizations under their umbrella and delivering high quality healthcare to more people and communities in the regions it serves. 

Automation significantly improves financial reporting and operational efficiency, making it a truly strategic investment. Try Plooto free for 30 days and see first-hand the impact automation can have on your NGO.