February 1, 2010
Tabulating results starting to become a secondary function for many tools.
"Rather than producing traditional financial statements only, smaller nonprofit organizations are looking for tools that enable trend analysis, evaluation of financial results based on multiple dimensions (funder, program, category, location) with ability to slice and dice that data in real time," said Tom Thornton, vice president of sales for JMT Consulting Group (http://www.nptimes.com/10Jan/100115SRb.pdf).
"Tools to present this information in a traditional report format or in more aggregate forms (charts, graphs, ratios) are part of the requirements presented in most of our new client engagements. This has also manifested itself in the form of interest in tools like business intelligence (BI) and BI-like tools that are fully integrated with their accounting data (and other data silos, in some cases)."
An excellent summary of software vendors is included in this article.
Source: The NonProfit Times, January 15, 2010
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