Preston Trail Community Church Uses Intacct to Gain Clearer Insight into Finance and Operations

"Intacct has allowed us to bridge the gap between efficiency and being a people-oriented caring ministry.”

— Dennis Richards, Executive Pastor, Preston Trail

CHALLENGES

• Drowning in a sea of Excelspreadsheets

• Plagued by confusion, delays,and lack of confidence inreporting

• Had outgrown their existingplatform

PREVIOUS SOLUTIONS

RESULTS WITH INTACCT

• Information that is important tothe organization is now deliveredquickly and cohesively

• The back-office financial team ismore efficient and more flexible

• Church leadership has access toinformation that helps them makeinformed decisions

Keeping tabs on church metrics was labor-intensive and management felt as if they were constantly shuffling paper reports back and forth.

Reporting Confusion

Preston Trail's reporting had become confusing and difficult for even experienced finance team members to keep straight. The church back-office had become the “paper police.” Most ministry leaders feared being called into the finance office. Church executives were in constant need of new reports to help clarify the church's financial needs but never seemed to crack the code on getting it right.

Reporting Delays

The effort required to generate reports left the finance and accounting team perpetually understaffed. They were typically taking 30 days to close the books every month, and lacked real-time visibility into their financial data.

Confidence in Reporting

These delays and manual processing caused Preston Trail's leadership to have a lack of confidence in their reports. This became more apparent as they undertook major building or capital campaigns. Constant requests for more data, and better projections had become a deadlock for the organization.

In 2002, Preston Trail Community Church held its first service at the AMC Theater 24 in Frisco’s Stonebriar Centre Mall. By 2005, the church moved to a converted manufacturing plant for electronic circuit boards, where it would thrive and grow for eight years. During this time, the church launched new ministries such as Celebrate Recovery and ReEngage and welcomed thousands of people from the North Texas community through its doors. In 2014, Preston Trail relocated to its current building, a modern structure that can handle the church's 3,500 members. The new building has four separate worship venues and sits on a 35 acre campus in Frisco.

With its expansion in membership and in ministries, insight into financial and operational data became an increasingly important requirement for the church's leadership. Preston Trail's leaders struggled to get the visibility they needed from their financial systems.

Challenges Faced Prior to Intacct

Spreadsheet Bottleneck

Generating reports was time-consuming and error-prone and the church's legacy system had become inefficient and a bottleneck for productivity.

• Shelby

• QuickBooks

info@accttwo.com | www.accttwo.com/churches | 1.713.744.8425

Given the challenges they were facing, church management knew they had a lack of clarity in their systems. They always seemed to be looking backward into their financial past and never forward in their projections with any amount of confidence, clarity or accuracy. They simply had outgrown their existing platform and needed a more systemic approach to financial and operational metrics.

Finding a Solution

Identifying the Problem

At first Preston Trail wasn’t even sure what the ideal system looked like, which led them to seek advice from other churches and organizations. They quickly realized that their financial systems needed to be improved and updated to utilize current technology.

info@accttwo.com | www.accttwo.com/churches | 1.713.744.8425

Industry Not-for-Profit/Faith-based

HeadquartersFrisco, TX

OverviewIn the fall of 2001, a dream was born in the hearts of Paul Basden and Jim Johnson. The two longtime friends were senior pastors of large, denominational churches in the Southeast; positions that granted influence, respect and job security. Nevertheless, they determined to uproot their families and move a thousand miles away to fast-growing Frisco, Texas with the goal of starting a new church for people who had given up on church, but not on God.

More than Accounting

Preston Trails' leaders knew that they needed a system based on solid accounting functionality. But they also wanted a platform that would allow them to be more forward-thinking in their analytics and their ability to create custom reports.

Awareness of Options

Through networking and consultants, several requirements became apparent. Preston Trail wanted flexibility and customization in reporting, automated and streamlined business processes, and they wanted to create a more paperless environment with accessibility from anywhere via the Cloud. They also knew they needed to reduce their dependence on IT staff to maintain their financial systems.

The church's staffing budget simply couldn't support upgrading to another more costly legacy system.

Results with Intacct

Executive Pastor's Background

Executive Pastor Dennis Richards comes from the secular business world where he worked in marketing. His first role in churches was as a Communications Director. He later transitioned to the Executive Pastor role. His leadership background has not been in finance. That means that he relies on systems that can put information into his hands in an intuitive way. The use of dashboards and real-time reporting has provided him data in a way that allows him to work with Preston Trail's financial team to map out the church's fiscal strategies.

Intuitive Dashboards with Intacct

With Intacct, church leaders are able to get the information they need delivered quickly and cohesively. This includes:

• Giving: Weekly, Monthly and YTD

• Revenue vs. Expenses

• Current Cash Position

• Attendance

About Preston Trail

These reports and dashboards are quickly accessible and contain real-time data.

Impacts on Day-to-Day OperationsFinancial Life Made Simpler

With Intacct, Preston Trail benefits from a more accurate and sophisticated system for financial reporting. Church leaders have more confidence in their reports and ministry leaders actually look

at and understand the financial reports for their ministries. This lets the church concentrate more on its mission and less on its budget. While budgeting is still important, reaching people for Christ remains Preston Trail's number one goal.

Having a simple overview of budgets and flexible reporting allows ministry leaders to concentrate more on ministry and less on financial matters. Their dashboards and tailored reporting allow for quick up-to-the-minute reports that can be custom tailored with line graphs, pie charts, and bar graphs which are easy to understand.

Efficient Staffing

With Intacct Preston Trail's back-office finance team is more efficient. Reports can be produced quickly, which reduces manual processes and paperwork and improves workflows. Even though their systems are light years ahead of where they were a few short years ago in terms of sophistication, they have been able to maintain their staffing levels.

Satisfying Church Leadership

Because of Intacct, Preston Trail's leaders have been able to satisfy the financial questions that in the past would have required hours of discussions and debate. In 2015, the church's budget submittal process was made so much easier that they actually delivered the budget ahead of schedule and the approval process from the board was done in under thirty-minutes. This was entirely made possible by the improvements that church management has made in their processes and systems since moving to Intacct.