Not-for-profit expands finance capabilities with support from MNP

This international organization has a small team but with a lot of people and organizations relying on them globally, they needed to make sure finances were handled faster and more effectively.

CANADEM is an international not-for-profit that advances peace and security. The organization mobilizes over 60,000 international humanitarian aid and election experts wherever they’re needed, quickly and efficiently. With its global reach, the organization had to effectively track financial contributions to its many members. CANADEM’s legacy financial management and accounting system wasn’t allowing the team to get the information they needed without doing a lot of manual work, slowing the financial side of the organization down.

The legacy system, Sage 50 Quantum, had an outdated interface that didn’t provide necessary information to make informed decisions and connect with operational processes in an efficient manner. To bridge this business gap, CANADEM’s team, like most organizations, pivoted toward manual workarounds and relied on spreadsheets to understand what was happening on a given project. What’s more, this disconnect resulted in time-consuming report generation for updating its donors on the project-related work being executed — a significant undertaking for an organization that can have multiple international projects running simultaneously.

Another major issue was that the finance team had to spend frustrating hours each year determining which of its consultants required a T4A remittance form. Automating the task was a high priority, as was implementing a new payroll solution that integrated into their finance system — as this was another time-consuming task.

After learning that Sage 50 Quantum was being discontinued, CANADEM’s senior finance officer began looking for a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. A number of options were evaluated, with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central being deemed the best fit based on current requirements. The organization was already using Microsoft technologies for other tasks and was able to leverage the “Not-for-Profit” pricing that made the solution very affordable.

MNP had been a long-standing trusted advisor to CANADEM, having worked on its audit. In light of this pre-existing partnership, CANADEM’s finance team thought it made sense to turn to the firm for help implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central into its operation.

The MNP Digital team met with CANADEM to gain an in-depth understanding of its finance and operational needs and helped map out a digital strategy. Microsoft Business Central met most of CANADEM’s requirements out of the box, with two enhancements required. The first was to give them the ability to identify consultants who required a T4A when they were entered into the system.

The second concerned payroll. Because Microsoft Business Central doesn’t have integrated payroll, this enhancement involved working with a new payroll solution to ensure that payroll data would be automatically uploaded into the ERP solution.

CANADEM also chose to take part in MNP’s Customer Success Program. The program offers organizations the opportunity to pay a set monthly fee for unlimited expert support, allowing teams to confidently grow with their systems.

The work performed by MNP Digital added to the overall capabilities of Microsoft Business Central, making a positive impact and saving the finance team hours of work every year end. Now they simply pull one report that lists everyone who needs a T4A, with the appropriate amounts.

The finance team can now track the costs of individual projects and can communicate more quickly with funders. CANADEM no longer has to wait until projects are completed to let funders know the state of the budget, allowing everyone to be on the same page even mid-way through a project.

With the legacy system, it took days to handle insurance, staff time, and overhead allocations. Now these take much less time, with insurance alone — just one of the many time-consuming tasks — going from six hours to just 20 minutes each month.