Customer Case Studies

© 2018 Sage Intacct, Inc. All rights reserved. www.sageintacct.com 877-437-7765 Conquering Complexity with Intuitive, Cloud-Based ERP Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland C A S E S T U D Y Company Overview Established by Pope Pius IX in 1853, the Catholic Diocese of Portland spans the entire state of Maine, serving a population of 279,159 Catholics. In addition to 58 parishes, the nonprofit organization manages 10 elementary schools, one high schools and 65 cemeteries, along with several subsidized housing units and a foundation. Executive Summary Previous So ware: • LOGOS Accounting • USL Financials Results with Sage Intacct: • Gained timely, accurate in- sight into parish operations • Improved overall finance efficiency by 10% • Avoided ~60 hours annu- ally on consolidations and reporting • So ware paid for itself in the first year Challenges Conquering Complexity with Intuitive, Cloud-Based ERP The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland serves parishioners across the entire state of Maine through over 100 distinct entities, including parishes, schools, cemeteries, housing projects, a foundation, a magazine, a pension trust, and other ministry programs. This complex organization previously struggled to manage its financial reporting because a central finance team used one accounting system at the main chancery office, while the parishes used another so ware program with separate databases for each entity. Consolidating annual financials had become a massive undertaking, with the team spending around 15 hours logging in and out of these databases to manually export data for every single parish and import it all into the main system. And since that so ware could not support the diocese's reporting needs, they prepared most reports in cumbersome Excel spreadsheets. The team eventually went in search of a single, cloud-based financial system that could support the entire organization, including 70 bookkeepers in the field. "Initially, we didn't think we would find a solution that could work for all of our entities, because they're each so different. But, when we found Sage Intacct's cloud ERP so ware, we knew the whole organization needed to make the switch," said Laurie Downey, controller at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. "Sage Intacct has everything we were looking for – the ability to do real-time consolidations, robust reporting with drill-down capabilities, a much more flexible general ledger, strong internal controls with various levels of user access, and an intuitive interface for people of all technical abilities." Solutions Streamlining Consolidations and Reporting for Multi-Entity Financials The diocese worked with Sage Intacct partner, Cli onLarsonAllen, to complete a thoughtful implementation across all entities. The finance team estimates that the so ware freed up about 10% of their time by streamlining manual processes surrounding report preparation, consolidations, accounts payable, and expense management. Downey shared, "We used to consolidate only at the end of the year when we had our annual audit, because it took us so much time to pull in data from all the remote entities, but with Sage Intacct the information is just there. We can do all of our entity-level and global reporting right in the core system, and can consolidate everything efficiently each month without spending hundreds of hours on the task over the course of a year."

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