Accounting Software for Nonprofits: a Case Study of Infor SunSystems

The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s objective was to find a flexible financial solution for use in a nonprofit setting in more than 1,500 sites around the world, and to stay up-to-date with current platforms, operating systems, and databases.

The nonprofit setting on a global scale

As a nonprofit organisation, the Seventh-day Adventist Church endeavours to use the donations it receives in the most effective way possible. After years of using internally produced software, the financial team sought to implement a standardised, worldwide financial solution to gain operational efficiencies and find a balance between fulfilling local and worldwide needs and requirements.

Carl Friday, core configuration manager at the world headquarters, explains: "It needed an inner structure that could work with three-way multicurrency features, multilingual capabilities, and inter-organisational transactions."

Ray Wahlen, director for accounting software at the church, adds, "And with a wide variety of organisational sites - some with one financial staff member and others with up to 50 - the solution also needed to have scalability. We wanted one versatile solution that could be effective at every site."

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Why the Seventh-day Adventist Church chose Infor SunSystems for nonprofit

Getting business specific

Wahlen explains: “When we looked at solution companies and mentioned our multicurrency and multilanguage needs, Infor was the only one left standing. Infor SunSystems and Infor Query & Analysis solutions were the best choice to meet all of our requirements.”

Other key differentiators contributed to the Infor choice are its flexibility to customise for various environments and its ability to provide a standardised core financial product, and a lower total cost of ownership.

Fast implementation for quick results

Implementation of Infor SunSystems and Infor Query and Analysis for the Adventist Church is organisation-wide. The goal is to complete deployment of both solutions concurrently at 80% of its more than 1,500 sites around the world.

According to Wahlen, implementation at each site takes just a few weeks. “Our biggest challenge is that these organisations are all so different, varying from schools to hospitals and from publishing houses to food industries.”

Friday adds. “We’ve established eight standard analysis ledger dimensions as core worldwide values and allowed two for localized customisation to enable further analysis at each site.”

“We’ve gained significant efficiencies in many areas, especially data entry, with the single-entry format that changes dynamically, based on needs. We’ve also been able to streamline worldwide inter-organisational transactions and are working to further streamline, passing more and more data electronically,” Wahlen says.

Infor Query & Analysis users are able to rapidly import hundreds of lines of transactions at one time from other databases and other vendors.

“Financial statement production is an automated process in Query & Analysis. It’s interactive, allowing drilldown and slicing and dicing, providing greater transparency into finances. Our financial managers love it. We can produce a standard financial report among all organisations, while allowing each organisation to easily generate the same financial information in a different format, if necessary, to comply with local governmental requirements,” Wahlen says.

Wahlen adds that Adventists have saved costs by reassigning some personnel due to solution efficiencies and optimising those who are well trained.

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In summary, Infor SunSystems and Infor Query & Analysis have helped the Adventist Church by providing for:

• Fast implementation at each site while establishing standardised, streamlined processes across the organisation, despite vastly different site requirements.
• Seamless data sharing, creating significant efficiency gains in many areas through automated processes-improving productivity while saving costs.
• Greater flexibility in producing automated financial reports and other business information quickly, including applying profit and nonprofit capabilities to meet any localised need, with resulting improved transparency and organisational governance.

For more information about Infor SunSystems and Infor Query & Analysis, please request a free software demo.