"Sage MIP Fund Accounting made us so much more efficient that we were able to go from four to three people in our accounting office, and generally streamline our tasks by half. We will recover the costs of implementation in just nine months.... Sage MIP Fund Accounting is a lifesaver."
Angie Adams
Controller
Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art
Cheekwood Botanical Garden Blossoms With Sage MIP Fund Accounting
One year, Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, a graceful 55-acre property in Nashville, hired Angie Adams as a consultant to improve its accounting system. They liked her so well, that after several months, they offered her a full-time job as controller.
"My primary condition for being hired was that they implement Sage MIP Fund Accounting," Adams says. "The existing system, which had been donated to Cheekwood, was not designed for a nonprofit environment, and was completely wrong for our needs. I'd used Sage MIP Fund Accounting before, and knew it was the industry leader for good reason. I also could see that without Sage MIP Fund Accounting, the job would be a nightmare."
Garden of Savings With Sage MIP Fund Accounting
Cheekwood accepted Adams' conditions. She now uses Sage MIP Fund Accounting to manage all its finances. Operations include extensive specialty gardens, a museum of art with four major annual exhibitions, the First Learning Center with interactive exhibits on art and gardens, the Pineapple Room Restaurant, the Garden Shop, and Owl's Hill Nature Sanctuary.
Sage MIP Fund Accounting processes payroll for Cheekwood's 100-plus employees, runs hundreds of accounts payable checks every month, tracks all cash receipts by department and restriction, and creates financial statements for department directors and the board of directors. The solution even prints paid time-off on each pay stub, showing beginning balance, amount earned, and time available, which is a feature appreciated by both employees and supervisors.
"Sage MIP Fund Accounting made us so much more efficient that we were able to go from four to three people in our accounting office, and generally streamline our tasks by half," says Adams. "We'll recover the costs of implementation in just nine months. Acquisition costs, by the way, were covered by personal contributions from members of our board of directors. They saw the wisdom in a productivity tool that would reduce administrative costs for years to come."
Tight Tracking
Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art receives donations for many special purposes, such as the herb garden, rose garden, and particular art exhibitions. "If someone gives us money to plant rosemary bushes, we must be able to prove that's where their donation went," Adams explains. "Sage MIP Fund Accounting lets us do this easily, with separate tracking for unrestricted, temporarily restricted, and permanently restricted net assets by function."
Adams notes that Sage MIP Fund Accounting allows Cheekwood to do a better job of analyzing its cash position and assessing whether funds are being used for administration or specific programs. "The software makes us superior stewards of our contributors' money by shedding light on each and every allocation," she says.
Sage MIP Fund Accounting Weeds Out Redundancies
Previously, Cheekwood had to export data from its accounting software into spreadsheets, since data could not be captured appropriately. Now financial statements are prepared directly from Sage MIP Fund Accounting, which has saved time and eliminated errors.
"We're in the process of adding Sage Fundraising 50 for our fundraising department," Adams says. "Since Sage Fundraising 50 will interface with Sage MIP Fund Accounting, I'm anticipating even greater efficiencies in the future. When a donation is entered into Sage Fundraising 50, it'll be transferred to my cash receipts, eliminating time now spent on duplicated entries."
Adams admits that she's been "in love" with Sage Nonprofit Solutions since she first began working with them. "Sage MIP Fund Accounting is a lifesaver," she says, "which explains why I'd put a wonderful job on the line for it."
