What to do when your finance team is short-staffed
Many nonprofits are struggling to fill critical finance roles in their organizations due to factors such as a shortage of accountants nationally, competing with private sector compensation increases, and high turnover rates. Daily, we hear frustration from our clients asking, “How can I operate more efficiently and effectively with my current team?” While there are no quick fixes, there are several things you can do to better leverage your current team.
- Look for areas that you can automate or outsource. We have written on this topic before (see links below), so we won’t spend much time here, but we do encourage you to check out these articles. Some of the areas where we typically see the greatest cost-benefit in terms of human resource savings include accounts payable automation (smart-reading of invoicing, smart-coding of invoices, electronic approvals and payments), expense management (credit card bank feeds, receipt capture and attachment), and month-end allocation automation (systems that allow for dynamic querying of bases of allocation and automatically create the appropriate journal entry). Another area we have seen significant benefit is in outsourcing payroll and HR services as a cost-effective way to automate payroll and benefits and help deal with the complexities of both an onsite and remote workforce.
- Standardization of work and cross-training. Frequently, financial procedures are either not documented at all, or are written but haven’t been updated in years. This makes training and delegating work to junior staff much more difficult, and we find senior staff holding on to work that they shouldn’t be doing. Furthermore, many nonprofits have very cumbersome Excel-based reporting tools that take hours to update manually. Here are some tips on how to move towards standardized work:
- Whether or not written procedures exist, ask each staff member to document all steps of their processes (a good idea is to just have a Microsoft Word document open while staff are performing processes). Collect these documents and begin to assemble a procedures guide for each cycle area (receipts, disbursements, payroll, etc.). If written procedures guides do exist compare the newly written procedures against the guide to determine if a refresh is needed. Set up a meeting with each staff member to review the process steps and look for ways to streamline.
- After the procedures have been reviewed, begin to cross-train staff in the finance department. Cross-training can significantly help to ease the disruption of turnover in the short-term as new staff are recruited, hired, and onboarded.
- As part of the standardization process take a careful look at the time spent creating reports that are outside of your core financial software. Most reports should be created within your software and if your software can’t create them, it may be time to look for better software. It’s also a great idea to ask report users if they really need and use the reports they are receiving and cull the ones that are not critical. Finally, your software should also enable self-service on reports through a live dashboard.
- Culture and service. We often speak with our clients about the importance of both the custodial and the service aspects of the finance function. When teams are 100% focused on the custodial, they tend to be less attached to the larger mission of the organization. According to the NonprofitResourceHub.org, “A loyal employee is truly invested in your organization’s work… They see the bigger picture of your work or mission, instead of just focusing on the day-to-day.” Strive to create a culture of service within your team – many other teams truly depend on their work for making decisions – budget owners, program managers, leadership. We have found that finance teams who truly view themselves as a customer service arm in support of the mission of the organization tend to have higher employee satisfaction and retention rates.
We understand the pain that the current employment landscape is creating. Use these suggestions to strengthen the team you have and we are here to help you if you need it!
Previous Links on Automation:
Getting out of Excel Spreadsheets | CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen) (claconnect.com)
New Directions in Spend Management Tools | CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen) (claconnect.com)
Top Priorities for Nonprofits in 2023 | CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen) (claconnect.com)
(Jocie Dye and Jeff Roberts contributed to this article.)
Jeff loves helping nonprofits achieve financial excellence through improved monthly reporting, cashflow management, strategic planning, and systems design.
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