How financial reporting can help show your impact as a charity

Often, the main struggle for charities is reporting that they are making an impact and displaying transparency of associated activity through their financial reporting. Whilst it’s one thing trying to raise the funds, it’s another showing exactly how these funds are being used and how this is being filtered into the cause.

The reality is that most charities, NGOs and not-for-profit organisations must be able to present accurate information showing fund allocation. This is crucial to prove impact to donors and determine whether continued donations are made. With impact evidence being a key component of fundraising, this function of the charity must be extremely accurate and easy for all key stakeholders, including financial and non-financial staff, to understand.

By having the resources to accurately record and present this data, charities and not-for-profit organisations can prove their credibility, enabling them to support their missions and projects with meaningful numbers. This feeds into subsequent marketing and fundraising campaigns, annual reports and materials that go beyond the logistics of implementing a basic financial management system.

However, a system like IRIS Financials could have a great impact on your charity. Its unique unified ledger possesses features that allow you to add a variety of analysis fields to financial entries. By automatically consolidating data from multiple locations in one place – including unlimited, user-defined ledgers covering individual projects, funds and contracts – IRIS Financials is best-in-class financial reporting software that generates the reports you need at the touch of a button.

Delivering a true and accurate report of the financial position of a charity takes time, namely due to the large amounts of consolidation and rationalisation required. The IRIS Financials system removes this lengthy element from the process by automatically reconciling accounts in one place through its unified ledger. With the system automatically reconciling, it is always in balance, saving time and eliminating the risk of inherent error that manual processes can create. The sheer breadth of information held within the system, coupled with a flexible multi-dimensional approach, allows every transaction to be tagged with user-defined attributes enabling users to combine, filter and cross-reference a huge volume of data, revealing invaluable business insights.

This knowledge can then help drive operational decisions for your charity to move forward and develop, with the supporting figures instantly available. Furthermore, charities widely utilise and store a range of different data sets, from financial information to donor details, which requires sophisticated software integration and security. We have taken this integration one step further with an entire suite of business software solutions that work together to boost efficiency, deliver business intelligence and streamline processes organisation-wide. Our tier-3 security level Cloud platform works with our entire suite to ensure your data is secure and accessible anywhere. With many charities having sites worldwide, having a system that can be accessed from any location is extremely beneficial. With these additions to your organisation, you can revolutionise the way you make an impact and showcase exactly where your valued donors’ funds are being utilised, and the change they’re supporting.

To learn how your charity can benefit from IRIS Financials’ integrated suite of business solutions visit our Charity software page.