Saving a non-profit 300 hours of manual effort that can be better used to support their goals

Archway Community Services is a non-profit, community-based social service agency that delivers more than 100 programs to families, seniors, and immigrants. As Archway grew, leadership realized the agency needed a new digital solution to help cut through the organizational complexity, consolidate the 200+ income statements they produce into something informative, and give 50-plus supervisors real-time access to the information needed for smarter, faster decision-making.

Using the existing Sage300 system, the Finance team needed to lock their system at month-end and had 15 days to clean up data and send individual reports to more than 50 supervisors. Supervisors rarely regenerated reports after updating historical information because it was onerous, and the team needed to move on to the next month’s manual tasks. This was an issue for an organization with many moving parts.

Archway needed someone who understood both accounting and IT to upgrade the entire process in a way that made sense for all stakeholders. After meeting with several consulting firms, they partnered with MNP Digital — which offered the technical expertise to implement a solution and emphasized the importance of a discovery phase to understand Archway’s complex reporting needs. That focus on achieving Archway’s business goals instead of merely solving digital challenges tipped the scales in MNP’s favour.

Archway and MNP immediately put a steering committee in place to guide this multi-layer project. The committee streamlined approvals, addressed high-level concerns, and provided direction to pivot if/when required.

MNP initially spent time with Archway stakeholders to understand the organization’s needs and goals. Archway was fixated on one specific system but asked for demos of other solutions to compare options. After seeing the side-by-side comparisons, Archway chose Sage Intacct (not the initial choice) due to its strong reporting functionality. From there, MNP prepared a business case for Archway leadership to present to the board. A quick approval process followed, and the project progressed to the implementation phase.

Setting up the system was a true collaboration, with MNP Digital providing expertise on Sage Intacct and the solution process and Archway sharing insight into their operations and requirements. MNP provided the business case for the system and conducted training and testing to ensure it worked and that Archway’s team understood its functionality and capabilities.

Archway supervisors can now access reports and a dashboard that delivers the necessary information in real time. The organization’s finance team continues to customize dashboards, further enhancing the decision-making capabilities of different users. Stakeholders across Archway’s internal stakeholder groups appreciate the ability to email an MNP member for support whenever there are questions.

MNP Digital continues to provide ongoing post-implementation support and guidance for Archway with its Client Success team. Ongoing training and one-to-one advisory allow the Archway team to continuously refine their processes and become more comfortable with the new system.

Archway estimates that Sage Intacct saves its reporting team over 300 hours of manual effort annually, freeing up time the team can now dedicate to the supervisors. They are also migrating to become fully digital as a result of the success of this project.