Global freedom nonprofit improves reporting efficiency 75% with Sage Intacct

For nearly 40 years, Atlas Network has championed individual and economic liberty across the globe. The nonprofit partners with about 475 think tanks and civil society groups in 100 countries to advance the principles of a free and prosperous world.

Atlas Networks’ accounting and finance function, however, was shackled to manual work through Excel and an entry-level QuickBooks application. Lack of integration between accounting, Salesforce CRM, and other systems meant hours of tedious double data entry. And information could be inconsistent and outdated.

“QuickBooks and Salesforce didn’t talk each other, and that was definitely an issue,” as Romulo Lopez, director of finance, says in our new customer success story. “It required a lot of double entry just to keep things synchronized. We needed to make things work better.”

Dramatic improvements came in 2017 when the Arlington, Va.-based Atlas Network upgraded to the Sage Intacct cloud financial management platform. And with Sage Intacct’s open API, Atlas Network had a simplified way to connect its accounting system with Salesforce and other applications.

50% More Efficient Financial Management

The results have been remarkable. Atlas Network has seen a 50% efficiency gain in how it manages invoicing and other financial information by integrating Sage Intacct and Salesforce, used for donor management. Creating a unified system of record has eliminated discrepancies that took time and effort to resolve.

“We no longer have to do monthly reconciliations between what was in Salesforce and what was in QuickBooks,” Lopez said. “That’s saved a lot of time, and it provides a single source of truth with consistent and accurate information in both Salesforce and Sage Intacct.”

Working with Sage Intacct partner T3 Information Systems, Atlas Network rolled out Solver BI360, a budgeting and forecasting solution that is replacing past Excel-based budgeting. Integration between Sage Intacct and Solver BI360 supports deeper, faster reporting for informed strategic and programmatic decisions.

“Integrating Sage Intacct with Solver BI360 makes it easy for executives and managers to view budget vs. actuals,” Lopez said. “They can drill down into details and assumptions, and they can adapt and make decisions based on accurate and timely data.”

Cutting the Close from 2 Weeks to 5 Days

Overall reporting efficiency has improved 75% with Sage Intacct compared to past Excel-based reporting in a massive spreadsheet that had 20 tabs, each with up to 150 rows and 90 columns of data. Now, Lopez can address questions in minutes, rather than needing two days to dig up information in QuickBooks and Excel.

“I’m doing more reports and I’m doing them faster with Sage Intacct,” Lopez said.

Another integration, linking Sage Intacct and an Expensify expense management application, has helped reduce the monthly close from more than two weeks to as few as five days.

Previously, employee credit card transactions would be downloaded from Atlas Network’s bank to QuickBooks, and details would need to be manually added. Lopez’s three-person team spent a lot of time making inquiries with credit card users.

“By automating that process, we have expense reports once they’ve been approved with all information embedded and they flow directly into Sage Intacct,” Lopez said. “That’s been a huge time saver.”