How Outreach Built a More Scalable Finance System
The Challenge: A Finance System That Could No Longer Keep Pace
Before implementing Sage Intacct, Outreach relied heavily on Excel and manual workarounds to manage its growing financial operations. Its annual budget alone lived in a 25-tab spreadsheet with thousands of rows, while several other core processes remained disconnected from the accounting system.
The challenges included:
- An annual budgeting process that required roughly 500 hours
- Bank transactions entered twice, once in Excel and again in the legacy system
- Wage allocations manually divided across departments
- Grant activity tracked through separate spreadsheets
Financial knowledge concentrated among only a few team members - Limited reporting capabilities and visibility into financial information
With wages representing 70% of Outreach’s budget, accurate payroll allocation was especially important. Even small errors could affect program costs, grant reporting, and management decisions.
25-Tab Excel Workbook
Outreach’s full multi-department budget previously lived in a 25-tab Excel workbook with thousands of rows.
The Solution: One Connected System
After implementing Sage Intacct with support from GRF, Outreach began moving its budgeting, wage allocations, cash activity, grants tracking, and reporting into one connected system. Employee cards now provide a single source of truth for salaries, benefits, raises, and departmental allocations, helping the organization allocate personnel costs more consistently. A daily bank feed also replaced the duplicate entry of transactions in Excel and the previous accounting system.
Outreach’s full multi-department budget now runs in Sage Intacct Planning rather than a 25-tab Excel workbook. GRF rebuilt the organization’s budgeting structure within the platform and helped the team complete implementation on schedule and within budget. Outreach expects the new system to reduce its annual budgeting effort from roughly 500 hours to 250 hours as the organization moves into its next budget cycle.
ATS Digital Content Library
GRF’s Accounting Technology Services team provides resources to help organizations evaluate, select, and implement accounting technology.