Sage ERP X3 Improves Efficiency and Quality of Financial Reporting for The Woodlands Foundation

Updated: May 17, 2012

Sage ERP X3 Improves Efficiency and Quality of Financial Reporting for The Woodlands Foundation

Sage North America announced today that, after over a decade of use, The Woodlands Foundation continues to rely on Sage ERP X3 and its financial reporting system to deliver mission-critical financial reports. Using its fully accessible and barrier-free facilities in Pittsburgh, this small nonprofit camp’s programs enable children and adults with disabilities and chronic illnesses to experience social, cultural, environmental, recreational, creative and spiritual growth.

After being spun off from a larger nonprofit as an independent nonprofit foundation, The Woodlands Foundation decided that it needed to manage its finances more efficiently and upgrade its financial reporting capabilities. Stakeholders such as board members and contributors were demanding timely, detailed financial reports that traced funds received to specific program expenditures. Regulatory bodies insisted on receiving meticulously accurate data formatted to exacting specifications. The Foundation had to achieve these objectives within the constraints of a limited budget.
“Sage ERP X3 is ideal for the detailed level of income and expense tracking that nonprofit organizations require,” said Peter Clakeley, executive director for The Woodlands Foundation. “We are able to track our revenues and expenses by funding source, project and program.”

While Sage ERP X3 has plenty of horsepower to manage the financial reporting of organizations with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Clakeley appreciates that its ease of use, intuitive interface, and efficient operation make it an ideal tool for managing the Foundation’s more modest budget.
“We are able to run this organization with one part-time financial clerk,” he said. “That is due in large part to the efficiencies gained with Sage ERP X3. A decade ago, our monthly financial reports required more effort and took us until the end of the following month to complete. Now they are wrapped up by the end of the first week in the month.”
There is a broad and varied audience for many of the Foundation’s reports. Each manager receives reports detailing his or her department’s year-to-date budget to actual performance by individual general ledger line item. Directors monitor reports that show the organization as a whole with revenue shortfalls and surpluses and expense savings and overages.

“We also generate reports that meet the needs of our board of directors and of course our accountants and auditors,” noted Clakeley. “We run multiple programs and projects simultaneously, each with a different source of revenues and each requiring specific tracking,” he added. “The multidimensional features of Sage ERP X3 allow us to easily capture data and create virtually any financial report we want.”
The Woodlands Foundation implemented Sage ERP X3 over a decade ago, and it continues to serve the organization well. “Three years ago we performed an evaluation of our systems to be certain we still had the best, most cost-effective tools available to us. We looked at other solutions but honestly could not find a better solution out there than Sage ERP X3,” Clakeley concluded.

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