Many organizations such as nonprofits, non-governmental agencies, K-12 school districts, state, and local government agencies depend on grants to fund some of, or in many cases, their entire operations. In the United States alone there are over 1.5 million nonprofit organizations[1].
Winning grants can be difficult, especially for competitive programs, so managing the grants that your organization receives is critical to making those grants successful and to paving the way for additional grants in the future.
A surprising number of organizations track grants in spreadsheets and use email as the principal means of sharing information and automating their workflows. This practice runs the risk of poor data integrity and usually requires monthly spreadsheet updates and distribution to decision-makers.
Organizations that receive grants should use an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, such as Serenic Navigator by Sylogist, that includes fund accounting to manage and streamline grant management processes.
As you know, fund accounting involves allocating money across categories called funds before the money is spent so that business rules governing the grant may be enforced. For example, grants typically specify budget categories and grant payments may be tied to milestones associated with completing objectives associated with the grant.
Fund accounting separates all financial accounts into individual categories, or funding received in grants and tracks the money throughout the grant lifecycle. The first stage is to establish funding sources. Grant programs may draw from multiple funding streams. The funding source determines compliance requirements and drives later grant reporting.
Using grant management software, as part of a comprehensive cloud ERP solution, can:
1. Improve decision making
Users enjoy access to real-time information such as expenses, sub-awards, obligations; all presented in easy-to-understand displays. Dashboards show graphs and visualizations of awards and spending. Each role or even individual users can have their own reports and dashboards.
2. Increase efficiency
Productivity goes up compared to maintaining separate information “silos”; everyone has access to the same information, reducing “back and forth” communications that waste time.
3. Streamline processes
Get a comprehensive picture, from start to finish, of your entire process and eliminate redundant and potentially conflicting data issues. The implementation process can identify bottlenecks and establish a consensus on ways to improve business processes.
4. Automate and simplify grant compliance with funder restrictions
Improve grant management by linking all relevant financial activity to a particular segment. Once business rules are automated you can trust that compliance will improve and spend less time on periodic reconciliation.
5. Access data in the format you need
Most modern accounting software, as part of an ERP solution, allows exports to Excel, PDF, and other formats, such as Word where the merge feature can be leveraged.
6. Provide user-defined multi-currency viewing
View and report grant data in different currencies, depending on your multi-national operational needs. This feature is particularly helpful for multi-national humanitarian organizations conducting operations worldwide. Transactions are tracked in local currencies and converted to dollars or another currency for aggregation and reporting to the Funding Source and for the organization’s consolidated reporting.
7. Increase flexibility
Choose to incrementally vs. fully obligate funding, recognize revenue based on milestone completion or invoice generation, and define indirect cost allocation methods at both the funding source level and the award level.
Most accounting software lacks features designed with grant management in mind, so consider using a comprehensive ERP solution, such as Serenic Navigator This means that you can have a solution from an organization, like Serenic Software, who delivers comprehensive solutions designed specifically for nonprofits, international NGOs, K-12 school districts and public sector organizations.
About Serenic Navigator & Sylogist
Sylogist is a public sector SaaS company that provides comprehensive ERP, CRM, fundraising, education administration, and payments solutions that allow its customers to carry out their missions.
Sylogist serves over 1,950 customers globally, including all levels of government, nonprofit and non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, and public compliance-driven and funded companies.
Serenic Navigator, brought to you by Sylogist, is a pioneering fund accounting software solution for nonprofits, NGOs, K-12 Schools, Government, faith-based and religious institutions.Serenic Navigator has offers fund accounting, deposits and loans, grant and award management, budget management, payroll and human services, data integration, and analytics and reporting.
Source:
[1] Fund Accounting: A Must for Nonprofits from https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/fund-accounting/
