Imagine one web-based platform that allows your non-profit institution to track and manage endowments and other restricted funds seamlessly. With Balance by EverTrue, it’s possible. We’ve created a way for our finance and business office friends to work smarter, not harder.
At EverTrue, we work with lots of finance teams to digitally create, collect, and collaborate on endowment accounting. But, before partnering with us to go digital, many of our finance friends would sum up their work lives in three words:
“Spreadsheets. Spreadsheets. Spreadsheets.”
Ok, don’t get us wrong, we appreciate a good spreadsheet. A well-functioning pivot table can solve many problems. There is certainly a time and a place for Excel to excel.
However – accounting and reporting on endowed funds is just not the moment for spreadsheets.
To put this in simplest terms:
- Working in spreadsheets leaves too much room for manual errors
- Sharing fund information in spreadsheets is not a secure way to transfer sensitive financial information.
Hear us out on why you should move your endowment accounting process away from spreadsheet land and into a secure, digital platform.
1. To save hours of valuable staff time (and their sanity)
In an industry where resources are always limited (that non-profit life!) and burnout rates are high, saving employees time and stress is a wonderful thing. We should always make decisions with employees’ wellness in mind.
We named our EverTrue endowment accounting tool “Balance” for good reason. Your job is critical, but it doesn’t have to be so stressful. We built this platform because we truly want to help simplify life for finance and business offices. (We even created a series of guided meditations tailored specifically for finance and endowment accounting professionals. You can access them here.)
Take, for example, the fund import and edit process. Rather than manually adding and editing fund details, Balance users can use the Import function to apply additions, updates, and spending rules to a bulk set of funds – which saves hours of time on manual fund entry.
Our imports and exports are built to be flexible and work with your data. Balance works with many accounting systems including: Workday®, Peoplesoft®, Oracle/FRS®, Jenzabar®, Financial Edge®, Ellucian/Banner Finance® and Ellucian/Colleague Finance®.
In Balance, you and your team will save tons of time and stress. Phew!
2. To streamline collaboration with colleagues
Communication is key with any work project (or any life project, for that matter). If we are able to row in the same direction as our colleagues – we all win. If not, we don’t.
And when it comes to collaborating on high-priority and complex projects like endowment accounting and reporting, clear and consistent communication is an absolute must.
There are many parties involved in endowed fund management (finance managers, auditors, gift officers); and each has a different level of involvement with the process (fund reporting, fund reviewing, fund distributions, donor communications).
Using Balance by EverTrue, you can digitally collaborate with all of your colleagues. In Balance, users can give Report Access to folks who need to quickly run fund reports, and grant Read-Only Access to allow internal and external colleagues to view fund reports and basic fund details. Balance even generates on-demand auditor-ready SOC reports to efficiently supply auditors with necessary information.
3. To ensure accuracy
If you are a human, then you are a mistake-maker. (No shame – it’s just part of our nature!) So, if you’re manually editing, sorting, filtering, and passing fund data back and forth, you can guarantee there will be errors.
But when dealing with something as sensitive as the details and impact of a donor’s major philanthropic investment, there is really no room for error.
Luckily, this is where technology shines. You – the careful, mindful, rational human – can thoughtfully put the data in the right place and pull the right levers. And then the accounting technology ensures that no penny falls through the cracks.
In Balance, users can import fund information using our Import tool. Our 2-step data validation highlights data discrepancies for users to address and correct. Then, users set up applicable spending rules, donor specifications, and assign funds, either en-masse or individually, as needed.
Users can later distribute funds based on donor specifications and spending policies, as well as make transfers into expendable funds automatically. And our reports help you proof out every calculation to the penny.
By spending less time in the weeds on spreadsheets, finance pros can stay focused on the human elements of endowment accounting: collaborating with colleagues, overseeing smooth processes, and building a healthy institution for many years to come.
4. To keep your fund data secure
As we said before, sharing fund information in spreadsheets is not a secure way to transfer sensitive financial information. Passing spreadsheets back and forth via email or an internal messaging system is a hacker’s playground – and leaves multiple opportunities for data breaches.
For these reasons, security is a top-of-the-tippity-top priority for our Balance platform. Our applications and client data are hosted at an SSAE18-audited facility that is monitored 24/7, and Balance is audited yearly for SOC 1 compliance. All Balance application sessions are encrypted over TLS connections, and each client’s data is maintained in its own database. Along with a highly secure hosting facility, Balance uses multi-factor authentication and regular monitoring of logins and activity on the site to further ensure a secure environment.
In short, shifting your fund management workflows away from spreadsheets and into a secure, digital portal will be a really smart move for your institution.
5. To increase transparency
We know that finance managers are inundated with requests from various internal stakeholders about fund information. And while it’s very important that the buck stops with finance managers, providing colleagues with on-demand, view-only access to endowed funds can really help to remove the bottleneck.
It looks like this:
In Balance by EverTrue, the platform administrator can provide report-only and view-only access for specific funds or groups of funds, both endowed and expendable, to staff, leadership, auditors, and development colleagues.
This means that finance managers can provide greater transparency and timely reporting to an unlimited number of users, all while maintaining control of the fund numbers. (Report-only and view-only users cannot edit, add, or modify any data or financial information.)
This means fewer phone calls and emails to finance folks, smoother cross-team communications, and greater transparency across teams. Everyone wins!
6. To manage funds all in one place
Most institutions have a large number of True, Term, Quasi, and Unrestricted Endowed funds. (In fact, 1 in 5 of our customers has over 1,000 funds.) And if there is at least one spreadsheet per fund to track its fiscal year performance, contributions, and distributions… well, that means there are a lot of spreadsheets in play.
Setting aside the security and accuracy concerns that we’ve already covered, dealing with this many spreadsheets is just plain inconvenient.
Rather than keeping track of the latest version of endowed fund spreadsheets, by shifting to a digital platform, you can access, view, and edit funds all in one place.
Balance by EverTrue is a web-based software, meaning that all fund information exists in one simple, online platform. And with the levels of security that are built into the Balance platform (see point number 4), this means that you can rest easy and manage your endowment accounting processes from wherever there’s internet.
Ready to get out of spreadsheets?
If you agree that it’s time to get your endowment accounting out of spreadsheets and into the modern era, then we would love to chat. Book a Balance demo with a member of our team.