Nonprofit Canine Companions® saves $500k annually and unleashes major expansion with Sage Intacct

California-based service dog provider improves efficiency 50% and shortens audit process 25% by moving to cloud-based financial system

ATLANTA, Oct. 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sage (FTSE:SGE), the market leader in cloud business management solutions, today shared the business improvements Canine Companions gained by moving its financial software to the cloud with Sage Intacct. Switching from an on-premises accounting software that required the finance team to do 70% of its work manually in Excel or with paper-based workarounds, Canine Companions has automated processes and gained deeper insights into the organization. With the new solution, Canine Companions was able to scale its finance operations to keep pace with their 2.4x growth in grants, assets, and transactions, while at the same time processing receivables 50% faster and reducing costs by half a million dollars.

Over the last four decades, Canine Companions has teamed more than 7,000 service dogs with adults, children, and veterans with disabilities — all at no cost to clients. With a mission of bringing greater independence to these program participants, the human services nonprofit organization now spans six training locations across the United States. Canine Companions leadership credits the digital transformation Sage Intacct enabled, as the reason the finance team could keep up with the nonprofit’s growth.

“To see where the organization was five years ago and how it’s performing now with modern automation and insight has been very gratifying,” said Jack Peirce, CFO at Canine Companions. “Sage Intacct made it very easy to absorb our rapid growth in transactions, and we did it efficiently while maintaining internal controls. We’re now realizing economies of scale.”

With their regional scope, navigating complexity across locations and functions with the cloud was critical. With its move to Sage Intacct, Canine Companions finance team quickly saw incredible results, including:

• Saved $500k annually through better visibility into expenses. Canine Companions can now more easily spot opportunities to reduce expenses. They’ve become more efficient with dog food and telecommunications spending, for a total savings of around $500,000 every year which can now be used to provide additional programs.

• Freed 50% of time spent on gift processing. The finance team’s workflow improvements include 40% more efficient accounts payables and purchasing, as well as 50% faster and more accurate receivables processing for donations and gifts. This was achieved by fully automating previously manual tasks such as documenting journal entry approvals and issuing paper-based checks.

• Shortened audit process by 25% and reduced audit cost by 20-25%. With the newfound visibility provided by Sage Intacct, Canine Companions was able to reduce the back-and-forth during audits. By providing read-only access to Sage Intacct for auditors, they can make audits 25% faster, and expect efficiencies to deliver 20-25% cost savings to next year’s audit.

• Improved fundraising event ROI by 10%. More timely information has helped the nonprofit boost the ROI of its fundraising events by 10%. They accomplished this by tracking fundraising metrics across both corporate and individual donations.

In addition to these improvements, the new system has also expanded the ability for Canine Companions to pursue more complicated grant funding that was previously out of reach. Pierce notes, “Our development team is no longer afraid of restricted funds or pledges. They know we can account for them and administer them effectively, so they’ll have the information they need to steward those donors.”

For more information on how Canine Companions is benefitting from its move to Sage Intacct, read the full case study here.

Media contact:          
Caitlan Fowler
caitlan.fowler@sage.com
+1 470.447.4118

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