Serenic is looking forward to showing a sneak peak of DonorVision 2011 at the AFP 49^th International Conference on Fundraising.  DonorVision 2011 is the newest offering in our financial and operational product suite, being release later this summer.

If you’ve ever attended AFP, you’ll know it’s a great conference for nonprofits to learn and hear about fundraising best practices.  Plus who wouldn’t want to visit Vancouver, BC?  The AFP website describes the conference:

“It’s a place to gain insight from industry and world leaders, a chance to learn breakthrough fundraising tactics, and an opportunity to share your own successes and challenges while meeting colleagues from across town and around the globe.”

While you’re there stop by Serenic’s interactive booth.  We’ll have fun give-a-ways and scratch cards with instant winners of Hip Hop Laptop bags designed to keep the busy executive on the go.  If you have an extra 30 seconds and fill out a quick three question survey, we’ll enter you into a drawing for an XBOX.  And of course, we’d also love to show you some highlights of the new DonorVision 2011.  You’ll come for the prizes and stay for the excitement!  See us at booth 840 located in the Plum colored carpet area.

If you’re unable to make it, but someone from your office does, tell them you want one of the iPad microfiber cleaning cloths .

We recently sponsored a special report in the February 2012 issue of Accounting Today.  The article, “Challenges and Opportunities with Nonprofits,” talks about the unique scenarios each nonprofit segment encounters and the skills and expertise required of the CPA firms with which they work.

For instance, health care providers face different challenges than educational institutions, social services organizations, religious organizations, and public sector entities.

Some of these challenges may be obvious, but if you’re a CPA firm looking to enter the nonprofit & public sector niche, check out the article.

Challenges:

• Managing capital spending on facilities & equipment
• Nonprofit accounting that facilitates third-party reimbursements
• Endowment and investment tracking
• Audit compliance requirements for state and federal funding
• Transparency and reporting to boards and donors

We’re happy to share how Serenic Navigator helped solve APA’s need for integrated nonprofit financial and supply chain management software.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has over 150,000 members and over 500 employees with executive and administrative offices, a publishing operation, five substantive directorates, 54 divisions, a 501(c)(6) companion organization and two real estate LLCs.

The APA was looking for a financial management software solution for a nonprofit association and supply chain management for their publications division. Some of the goals of the accounting system included:

• real-time financial reporting capabilities
• improved workflow
• automated integrations between systems

AVF Consulting presented Serenic Navigator, our fund accounting software built on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV platform.

“Serenic provides us with the ability to integrate our financials and supply chain management for a single, centralized, up-to-date customer ledger and accounts receivable,” says Jerry McGlaughlin, Senior Director of IT Planning and Business Management for the APA . “We anticipate significant workflow efficiencies, better access to data, and improved inventory management.”

Thank you to AVF Consulting for bringing this latest client aboard and implementing our software.

Evaluate your existing financial solutions with these questions:

1. The USCCB recommended the use of the FASB standard financial presentation. Does your current system facilitate this type of reporting?

2. Catholic schools are being challenged by increased operational costs and an economy in which families are opting to send their children to public schools because of the cost. Have you reviewed the administrative operations of schools and parishes to find potential economies of scale by centralizing functions such as payroll processing?

3. Would centralizing each organization’s fundraising activities and/or providing more detailed information on how funds are managed /spent assist in securing larger contributions from parishioners? Do you have such a centralized system in place?

This concludes our series about how Serenic can save time on financial and accounting tasks for diocese, and help you focus on your core mission.

Access the “Achieving Financial Transparency for Dioceses” FREE whitepaper.

The Serenic Navigator financial software offerings may appear as separate, individual offerings, but are in fact interconnected and interrelated. Guided by our commitment to serve not-for-profit organizations, Serenic Navigator is a family of products designed to grow with you and give you the features and functionality your nonprofit or NGO needs to achieve its mission in a highly efficient and effective manner.

Once you have determined which purchase model you want to follow – license or subscription – you’re ready to determine what fund accounting version is the best fit for the needs of your nonprofit.

• Basic, only available in under the Subscription model, is designed for smaller organizations with very basic processes and needs. It includes all the necessary core functionality as well as some moderately advanced functionality. For example, Purchase Requisitions are not supported in this version, but Purchase Orders and Purchase Invoices are available.

• Business Essentials, or BE, is available under the Subscription and License models and builds off the Basic version by adding functionality, including Purchase Requisitions and Batch Allocations. Also included are two additional modules: AwardVision Basic and BudgetVision.

• Advanced Management, or AM, is available under the Subscription and License models and is our most advanced version. The additional functionality included in this version is designed for larger nonprofits and NGOs with more complex processes and accounting needs, and includes Workflow Management, a transaction approval module, and the advanced BudgetVision features “Calculations & Assumptions” and “Approvals.”

View a list of some of the features and functionality available in the Serenic Navigator family of products. For a full feature comparison, download the full fact sheet on our website.

Contact us if you have further questions about the License vs. Subscription models, and the Basic, BE or AM versions. Lots of options; we’re here to help you navigate through them!

Last week, we took a look at some of the benefits of installing one integrated financial management system across a diocese’s central office, its parishes, and schools. This week, we’re looking at a few more of the benefits that can help increase overall operational efficiency.

Thanks for learning more about how Serenic can save time on financial and accounting tasks, and help you focus on your core mission.

Access the “Achieving Financial Transparency for Dioceses” FREE whitepaper.

When considering nonprofit accounting software, the purchasing model adds another dimension to the decision process.  Which is the best fit for your nonprofit, NGO, or public sector agency?  Last week we discussed the license purchase model.

Another option you have is to move to the cloud by subscribing to the product.  Under this model, Serenic installs and maintains the software on servers belonging to a 3^rd-party provider under contract to our company.  Your data is stored on these servers in a solid-built facility, secured at multiple levels, including locks, video cameras, biometrics, and guards. At all times, our service provider is proactively monitoring the system for problems, with anti-virus technology, backup and disaster recovery, and data privacy protocols in place.

In addition to the relief from the IT requirements, your organization may prefer predictable monthly fees, as compared to a single, initial capital investment.

With Serenic Navigator, you will purchase named users – for example, if you have 20 users needing access to Navigator, each of these users will require a subscription. (If you’ll remember from last week’s article, under the License model you purchase concurrent users.)

To access the program, you will be provided with two implementation options, depending on certain functional requirements of your organization.  In both cases, you’ll install a low-profile application to your computer, or to multiple computers (e.g., office and home computers).

• Option 1, Application Virtualization Client (App-V) – Once App-V is installed, an icon is added to your computer’s desktop and you will open Serenic Navigator Online just as you access programs installed directly to your computer.  You will be able to import and export to your local installations of Word and Excel.
• Option 2, Citrix Receiver – Once the Citrix Receiver is installed, you will open a web site to log into the system and access Serenic Navigator Online.   You will also have access to Word and Excel from this interface.

Under the subscription model, Serenic is responsible for applying all upgrades as part of the service. To support this process, customizations are not allowed.

In our next article, we’ll look at some of the feature differences between the different Serenic Navigator offerings.

Benefits for Dioceses

The right financial management system should support and enhance the unique workflow processes of dioceses to help increase operational efficiency, manage cash flow and investments, and generate detailed financial reports. With one system installed across a diocese’s central offices, its parishes and schools, it can expect to realize these benefits:

Check back next week as we discuss more of the benefits for Dioceses.

Access the “Achieving Financial Transparency for Dioceses” FREE whitepaper.

Serenic offers multiple versions of its award-winning fund accounting software, and multiple ways to purchase our software – in fact, it can be a little overwhelming to determine what combination of offerings is the best fit.   In this article and the next, we’ll explore the two purchase models: License and Subscription.  First up, we’ll explore the benefits of following the License model and how it applies to a purchase of Serenic Navigator.

Under the traditional software model, you purchase a license that provides your organization with the perpetual right to use the software. You then install the product on your organization’s computers and servers.

Some nonprofits are most comfortable with their data stored locally and are willing and able to make a capital investment in the necessary servers.  Additionally, they may prefer to pay their costs upfront, rather than a monthly subscription fee.

An alternative under the traditional model is to purchase a license and contract with a 3^rd party to host the product on their servers and to provide access via the Internet.  Under this option, your nonprofit or NGO is spared the cost of purchasing and maintaining the servers.

With Serenic Navigator, you will purchase concurrent users – for example, if you have 20 users needing access to Navigator, but expect no more than 10 users accessing at any point in time, you would purchase 10 concurrent users.

One benefit to the License model is that should your nonprofit need specialized functionality, you can contract to have the product customized to meet your specific needs.

For example, a client outsources their Payroll to a 3^rd party, which provides a data file in a specific format.  The client would like to import this data into Serenic Navigator.  Without a customization, they would need to modify this file to match the standard import format required by Serenic Navigator.

However, because the client owns a license for Serenic Navigator, they can arrange for a customization to the import process so that the system uses the data layout defined by the 3^rd party Payroll provider.  When they receive a data file from their provider, they can seamlessly import their information with no manual steps by their staff.

With both of these options, maintenance of the financial software – for example, applying upgrades – is under your direction and control.

Next week we’ll discuss the subscription model, providing online accounting software in the cloud.

Financial controls are actually a subset of internal controls and typically refer to segregation of duties. The right financial controls ensure that the person entering invoices to be paid, for example, is not also able to mark the checks for payment or cut the checks without someone else’s involvement in the process. It is important that such processes are in place throughout a diocese, however, this becomes challenging in smaller parishes where there is only a part-time bookkeeper using a manual or moderately automated system. The financial controls need to be documented and monitored, especially if using a manual method. A computerized application through which these “duties” can be limited and the controls enforced with the system security, therefore, is an ideal solution. Dioceses might examine the economies of scale created by centralizing processes and – if possible – provide access for smaller parishes to computerized solutions that they may not be able to afford on their own.

Faced with the ultimate responsibility of the entire diocese, such a financial control system needs to possess certain attributes to ensure fiscal needs are met. Requirements for an enterprise-wide solution include:

• Effective and efficient processes – System should eliminate duplicate entry; automate manual processes; provide economies of scale; provide services from within the diocese finance department to all areas of the diocese (e.g., payroll). Investment is best in an application that can be rolled out and phased in over time to provide a costeffective solution with economies of scale. A vertically focused solution embedded within a leading mid-market application platform adds tremendous value, because it is
designed to be scalable to serve diverse needs while providing a set of industry-specific functionality (e.g. chart of accounts structure and adherence to key financial reporting standards).

• Reliable financial statements and accounting records – Software should provide a strong audit trail and reporting tools that enable easy ad-hoc as well as management-style report generation.

• Safeguard assets – A solution should provide the tools to manage investments and revolving loan funds as well as physical (fixed) assets; offer an audit trail and the ability to enforce financial controls.

• Adherence to management policy and procedures – System should, again, provide an audit trail and financial controls, as well as automated workflow and business rules to help prove that mandated procedures are being followed.

Check back next week as we discuss some of the benefits for Dioceses.

Access the “Achieving Financial Transparency for Dioceses” FREE whitepaper.