Canadian Not-For-Profit Partnership UNITI's AP Process is Fully Modernized Thanks to Yooz

Summary

Business: Not-for-profit

Invoices: 150-200/month

Locations: Canada

ERP: Sage Intacct

All-in-One

Streamlined process and a consolidated financial statement

Simplicity

Transparent process with centralized, readily available data access

Flexibility

Enables on-site, mobile, and remote office settings for employees.

Semiahmoo Foundation is a Canadian not-for-profit organization that forms part of the UNITI partnership and charities, alongside two other affiliated societies: Semiahmoo House Society and Peninsula Estates Housing Society. The foundation was established in 1990 to support an inclusive community by providing UNITI with the essential recognition, relationships, and resources needed to provide important services. These three societies work closely together to deliver vital services.

The Challenge

According to Ellen Powell, Director at The Semiahmoo Foundation, “We started to realize that we had a lot more financial and reporting needs that weren’t being met by (the current) accounting system.” With different entities and numerous intercompany transactions, the organization needed an efficient and transparent process capable of managing all the accounting variances, consolidating financial statements, and ensuring business continuity and adaptability in the new work environments.

To compound the accounting process problems, the employees were working remotely, and the group homes were isolated. There was no way to effectively circulate papers for approval, not in a timely manner.

Knowing that it would take a tailored solution to help resolve these (and other) issues, UNITI reached out to their longtime partner Cantatus - a full-service, Canadian-based managed service provider - for assistance.

Cantatus dedicated a lot of time learning about both the "whys" and "hows" of UNITI's AP process before recommending Yooz as the ideal Sage-integrated AP automation software partner.

‘’Everything's transparent. All the invoices and paperwork are all there and readily available. Really, what is important to us is, like I said, to be good stewards of the funds that we have. And in our audit process this year went so smoothly.”

- Ellen Powell, Director at The Semiahmoo Foundation

The Solution

The advanced Yooz automation platform was easily able to accommodate all the variances between the three entities, harmonizing them to roll up into a single source of truth. Both time savings and ease of implementation were key factors, allowing for easy tracking and reporting of funds.

The Yooz system also made the AP process easy and user-friendly, allowing employees to focus on the organization’s mission. Powell stated “… I work with a bunch of people who are basically social worker backgrounds - people helpers - and they’re not geared or oriented towards anything financial, but they picked (the system) up and are using it. And they learned it without hardly any help. Not a lot of troubleshooting. So, it was really, really smooth.”

With UNITI’s culture of accountability, this meant that the people who knew the most about what was going on were also the ones empowered to make decisions.

‘’(There) were all of a sudden instant remote workers and the question of how were we going to pass the paper around.”

Jodi Sohelli

President at Cantatus

The Future

UNITI continues to rely on Cantatus as an advisory service. And they continue to count on Sage Intacct and Yooz to power their Accounts Payable process. For a company directly involved with people, freeing themselves from the paperwork and office tasks means having the time – and funds – to do more for the community.

Ready to see the difference Yooz can make in your AP process?

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