Here’s why Business Central is the right choice for your nonprofit organization

Posted December 04, 2023

Nonprofit organizations understand the need to continuously improve and reinvent themselves. Many nonprofits are realizing that technology can help them achieve their mission.

This realization is causing many nonprofits to consider a cloud-based business management solution that does more than just save money and deliver remote work benefits.

The cloud provides many critical advantages for nonprofits, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is the preferred business management solution for nonprofit organizations in Alberta and elsewhere.

Business Central is a cloud-based ERP system where Microsoft deploys, maintains, and updates the application in the cloud for you, saving your organization the time and money associated with hardware and software management.

Business Central can help your nonprofit connect your finance, fund development, marketing, and operations within a single, easy-to-use application. This ERP system also offers fund accounting and grant management capabilities, and it can help you manage restricted funds and grants. 

If your nonprofit is currently using Quickbooks or Sage Accounting and you feel like you are starting to outgrow that software, Business Central is the logical next consideration. Many maturing nonprofits need more than just a basic accounting system as they look to grow their organization and realize more efficiencies.

Here is how your nonprofit will benefit from Business Central:

Improved productivity and insights.
Get real-time insights, automated workflows, and enhanced productivity with applications you and your employees are already familiar with, like Outlook, Excel, Teams and Word. For example, you can connect Excel to Business Central to create and modify records, transaction imports, budget uploads, reporting and more.

Greater financial visibility and performance.
Take control of your financial data to better manage cash flow, bank reconciliations, and more, while accelerating your financial reporting and making it easier to monitor your financial performance.

Boost engagement and improve donor relations and stewardship.
Optimize your donor relationship management by prioritizing prospects based on their giving potential, and track donor agreements to effectively steward donors.

Improved security, privacy, and reliability.
Store sensitive data, like donor information, in highly secure, state of the art datacenters, where it is accessible to the right people with zero downtime.

Be ready for growth.
Scale up and continue to perform without costly changes to IT infrastructure, while taking advantage of machine learning and AI.

Free up resources to work on more strategic tasks.
Automate routine business processes in Business Central to save time and money. Reduce the time and complexity associated with managing hardware and software so you can optimize your processes and focus on your strategic priorities.

Licensing discounts for nonprofits.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, registered nonprofits receive a 60% discount off retail pricing on licensing from Microsoft. This discount is a huge benefit as it is a cost-effective way to move your nonprofit into a more secure cloud solution and get you away from managing servers.

Joesoftware works with many nonprofit organizations. We recognize that changing your accounting system is an initiative your nonprofit needs to plan for.

It is good to start planning for a new ERP system at least one year in advance. A trusted advisor like Joesoftware will meet with you and to better understand your organization and needs. Through this discovery phase, we will create a detailed plan for the implementation of Business Central, and we will consider if there are any other Microsoft solutions you need. The plan will include timelines and costs, giving you everything you need for your senior management team and your board of directors.

If your nonprofit would like to learn more about or explore how a transition to Business Central could transform your operations and help you better focus on your mission, Joesoftware is ready to learn more and support you through the process.