Customer Case Studies

Customer Profile | 1 Case Study: Samaritan House Executive Summary Previous Solution: • QuickBooks, Excel Results with Sage Intacct: • Audit prep time reduced by eight days • Payroll processing cut from 1½ days to three hours • Dramatically improved budget visibility and control • Greater efficiency in a paperless environment Meeting the Unique Needs of Nonprofits Like most nonprofits, Samaritan House works within a tight budget. The organization strives to commit the vast majority of its limited resources into providing "safety net" services such as food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare to as many as 7,000 low-income people in San Mateo County, California. And like many nonprofits, Samaritan House relied on entry-level so ware for accounting and business reporting. Yet limitations in applications like QuickBooks and Excel can mean manual work and guesswork decisions that drive up cost and diminish social impact. At Samaritan House, the five-person accounting team juggled multiple spreadsheets for monthly statements, while producing annual reports would take weeks of work. All the while, visibility suffered. "QuickBooks wasn't handling our reporting requirements, and we weren't able to easily get information for year-end financials and our audit," as Jolie Bou, Samaritan House CFO, recalls. "It made things really time-consuming and difficult." Bou wanted greater efficiency for the accounting team with a more automated, cloud-based solution. She also wanted to go paperless and have more robust capabilities to fulfill Samaritan House's role as a fiscal agent for eight other agencies. Most of all, she wanted to partner with a vendor that had tailored its so ware to the unique needs of nonprofit organizations. More Time for Analytics and Innovation Sage Intacct has proven to be the ideal solution. The cloud-based accounting platform stood out in its rich functionality, ease of use, and nonprofit capabilities a er Samaritan House's evaluation of Blackbaud Financial Edge, Serenic, and FUND E-Z. "Sage Intacct was really the only one at the technical level that was really investing in nonprofit organizations and gearing the so ware for the nonprofit world," Bou said. Going live in July 2015, Samaritan House has seen transformative benefits in time savings and insights that help it be er fulfill its social mission. For example, payroll processes that used to take one and a half days are now completed in just three hours with Sage Intacct. Preparation for annual audits in the past required eight days of pulling files, data, and report generation. Now, auditors can log in directly to Sage Intacct and select The flexibility of reporting in Sage Intacct and being able to get any information the way you want it has really been amazing for us. – Jolie Bou, CFO, Samaritan House

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