AcctTwo, a leading provider of online church accounting software and nonprofit financial services, recently reported that the U.S. church sector has accelerated investments in financial and accounting solutions in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. AcctTwo has increased its church clients by 10% since February 2020 and continues to see more demand, up 136% from a year ago, for software and faith-based managed accounting services amongst this sector.
“We’re seeing a great influx of technological upgrades among our faith-based clients due to the pandemic,” said Allison Webb, Head of Nonprofit Vertical at AcctTwo. “Though in the past few years, the faith-based sector has modestly upgraded their technological operations to match more modern business operations, social distancing and work-from-home requirements have forced church leaders to accelerate technological upgrades in order to access important financial information remotely. As a result, church finance executives have experienced more streamlined financial operations, more in-depth analytical reports, as well as improved forecasting and budgeting during an unpredictable time.”
In one example, Ward Church, a 60-year-old Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Northville, Mich., was on the verge of upgrading its technology that was slated to go offline right before the shelter-in-place orders were given. Facing the abrupt transition to remote working, Ward Church had no choice to accelerate its plans to adopt new church ERP software. Ward Church was able to move to remote operation seamlessly to maintain continuity.
Several other churches, such as Gateway Church in Dallas, The Bridge Church in Spring Hill, Tenn., and Seacoast Church in Mount Pleasant, SC, have also made the switch to AcctTwo’s church financial offerings and report enhanced financial and accounting functionality so they can continue supporting their communities and congregations.
“When the pandemic hit, our accounting teams were able to seamlessly transition to working from home because of the Sage Intacct software provided by AcctTwo,” said Chris Ockerman, Director of Administration at Ward Church. “Though we looked at many accounting software programs before the pandemic hit, we decided to go with Sage Intacct coupled with AcctTwo’s support services as they know the church sector well. We’re now able to schedule and push reports to users using an intuitive dashboard, access data anywhere — even on a mobile phone — make faster forecasting reports as well as improve our budgeting activities.”
AcctTwo currently works with 128 churches throughout the country across various denominations and has unparalleled experience in the faith-based sector. AcctTwo also has extensive experience in supporting the unique financial accounting and reporting challenges faced by clients in the non-profit arena.
“Though we’re seeing more churches shift to digital operations, the value and benefits they’re currently realizing in their accounting operations are the tip of the iceberg,” added Webb. “We’re constantly working on further innovations and curating finance tools and services that will propel the ability of churches to measure and demonstrate the impact of giving with far greater analytical insights that will help them in 2021 and beyond.”
The churches that were most successful at transitioning to cloud financial tools worked with partners experienced in faith-based, nonprofit accounting. “We have 25 staff members at AcctTwo who have been Church CFOs, Controllers, Accountants, Contribution Specialists, and Accounts Payable Specialists. We’ve all been in the same roles of the clients we serve today. It makes it easy for them because we have the expertise and tools to best help them navigate their operations during these challenging times because we have literally been there.”
For more information, visit https://www.accttwo.com or call 713-744-8400.
