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Giuntabell

Tammy Ven Dange
Giuntabell

Vendor Brief: Giunatabell - Accounting and Financial Management for Charities and Not for Profits

 

Tammy Ven Dange of Roundbox Consulting chats with Nunzio Giunta, Managing Partner at Giuntabell about supporting the Not for Profit sector with their finance services and solutions.

In this interview, we learn about:

 

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Tammy regularly helps Not for Profits make IT investment decisions. Let her know if you need some help.

Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Association President, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today she helps NFPs with strategic IT decisions as an independent consultant. She does not take commissions nor sign partnership arrangements with vendors.

 

Video Transcript with Giuntabell (Minor modifications have been made for clarity)

Tammy Ven Dange – Today I welcome Nunzio Giunta of Giuntabell. Nunzio, thank you for joining me today.

Nunzio Giunta – Hi Tammy, thanks for having me, really appreciate it.

About Giuntabell

Tammy Ven Dange – Okay, for those that don’t know anything about your organisation, can you please tell us more about Giuntabell.

Nunzio Giunta – So, Giuntabell is an accounting practice. We’re a CPA public practice firm, but with a really unique difference in that we exclusively only work with Not for Profit charity organisations all throughout Australia.

We really work with a lot of the smaller charity organisations where we provide sort of that full outsource finance function. So we do bookkeeping, payroll, CFO, all the way up to company secretary roles for those small charities and for all intents and purposes, we’ve become their finance team to provide them the expertise to deal with compliance, deal with all the things they need to do to maintain their charity status and do good within their community.

And I suppose over the years what we’ve done is we’ve been cultivating a tech stack accounting software systems and process to really drive efficiencies as part of that business in providing support for those small charities.

As we’ve developed that tech stack, what we really realised a number of years ago is that we’d cultivated a total system that was really beneficial to the larger charity organisations in Australia.

So roughly about four years ago, we started to implement these systems and Sage Intacct was a large part of that, whereby we implemented Sage Intacct for a number of those organisations and then developed the ecosystem for those organisations.

About Nunzio Giunta

Tammy Ven Dange – How did you get involved in the organisation?

Nunzio Giunta – So I’m the founder.  I’m the managing partner and the founder of Giuntabell. Over my career in a number of consulting work in the sector that whenever I did work for not-profit organisations or charity organisations, I actually found that that was the work I enjoyed doing the most.

It was around, what I really saw was an appreciation of the work we did. So whenever I engaged with a Not for Profit, they seemed to be really genuine in what they were doing, and they appreciated what you’re doing. So being appreciated, you would do more.

Over the years, I realised that I was gravitating to organisations in the NFP sector and the other realisation was that these people were doing amazing work. You had volunteers, you had people that were just developing so much, delivering so much value to their community and not doing it for any fee.

But also I saw the other side where some of these passionate, amazing people were getting themselves into trouble. And so what they were doing is now, you know, the director of organisation that hadn’t paid their superannuation for 12 months, that hadn’t met their obligations and then when they found out that there was an issue and that potentially could be held personally liable for it, they’d say, look, this is just too hard. I’m out of here.

So I really, I suppose, saw an opportunity to develop my professional career to support these individuals, to make sure they’re protected, to make sure that they don’t have to worry about the finances, to make sure they don’t have to worry about compliance so they can get on with doing what they do best and that’s giving back to the community.

That’s really how I got involved and established Giuntabell and focusing in this sector.

Giuntabell customers

Tammy Ven Dange – And so who are the kind of Not for Profit clients you have now?

Nunzio Giunta – In terms of our smaller charity organisations, we are the outsourced finance. So one of our organisations, for example, that we deal a lot with is Australian Federation Disability Organisations.

They have members and they’re dealing with a lot of grant funding, so we support them in terms of all the acquittal, their compliance and have been supporting them since 2016.

Another one that we really have got a strong relationship with where we do the entire outsource finance function, so it’s called the International Association of Public Participation, Australasia, IAP2, an amazing association where it’s all about supporting the profession in terms of stakeholder engagement and supporting them.

On the other side of it, in terms of our ERP implementation, organisations like Westgate Community Initiatives Group, WCIG, which is in the disability employment sector and we’ve been working there since 2017 and really they’re one of our key clients that have really embraced a lot of that technology.

Sage Intacct financial management for NFP sector

Tammy Ven Dange – Well, a lot of organisations, when they think about finance systems, Sage is not the first to mind. I know that most Not for Profits here in Australia, tend to use Xero or MYOB. Why do you think Sage is a good option for Not for Profits?

Nunzio Giunta – Yeah, it’s a really, really good question and I might tell you a story about how we got involved with Sage Intacct.

We were approached by WCIG in 2018 where they lost their CFO and the CEO approached me in terms of stepping in as an interim CFO to support them on their journey to then recruit their sort of permanent CFO.

And one of the areas identified was their finance system. I identified there were some gaps there and that really in order to drive efficiencies and set the organisation for success, that we needed to look at a different finance system for them.

So we went on a journey. We actually supported them on that buying journey in terms of finding the ideal solution. And so when we went to market, we looked at a number of systems.

We looked at Xero, we looked at number of the other higher end systems. And one of the things that really resonated with me was that Sage Intacct had a real focus towards the NFP sector.

For example, at the time, they had 33% of their customers were NFP organisations and the risk for that is that when you’re dealing with the NFP sector, it can be quite complex. We need to comply for all the accounting standards in many cases. So that means revenue recognition. That means overhead allocations. That means grant acquittals.

What I was finding is that a lot of the finance teams is that they were doing the finance function and they had the finance data in their finance systems. But when it comes to doing an acquittal report, for example, for a grant, they would export that to Excel and then they’d have to manipulate it and then provide the acquittal report.

If the board wanted to report in a different format, they’d have to export to Excel, manipulate it, send it through. And so it wasn’t ideal.

Sage Intacct, what that offers is, is the ability to have all the data in one place, but then within Sage Intacct actually develop the report structures through dimensions to be able to report to different stakeholders being the management, CEO, the board, with without exporting the data to Excel and using dashboards and using information where you can push that out to key stakeholders to consume that really quickly.

The other key thing is that Sage Intacct has a lot of automation built into the system. And so one of the big pain points associated with finance teams is end of month close.

I’ve got a vision that one day finance teams don’t do end of month close. And so Sage Intacct I saw is really taking the initiative to look at how do we automate journals, how do we automate reconciliation to then minimise the friction associated with that end of month close, and push the data out to key stakeholder as quickly as possible.

Sage Intacct for Multi-entity Organisations

Tammy Ven Dange – I suppose one of the other things I was thinking about is if it’s a multi-entity organisation. I’ve noticed that Sage has more flexibility than some of the other finance systems.

Nunzio Giunta – Absolutely, that is one of its key strengths. So we’ve got an org, so I’ve talked about IAP2. IAP2 has a business in Australia but also in New Zealand.

They’re not separate legal entities, but they actually have separate tax jurisdiction and so with Intacct, what we’re able to do is actually create, you know, have the really distinct businesses ’cause we need to report the different authorities.

What we are able to do is do that, but share the same chart of accounts, share the same customer list, supplier list, the same main records, but then really clearly distinguish what is New Zealand transactions versus what is AUD transactions.

So advocated for multicurrency, multi tax jurisdiction ’cause it has different GST rates and then consolidate all that data into AUD very quickly. And what it does also, the ability is to then create additional entities very, very quickly in terms of there are those additional entities that come online.

Integrations with Sage

Tammy Ven Dange – I suppose that one of the disadvantages with Sage not being as popular is that with third party integrations, you often see things already built for Xero and MYOB, but rarely do you see anything already built for Sage. Now how do you get around that disadvantage?

Nunzio Giunta – I actually don’t see it totally as a disadvantage. Sage Intacct has been in the global market for 23 years. It was actually built for the cloud back in 2000. And so out of the US, you do actually have a large amount of third party vendors.

Where our challenge has been around getting those vendors to Australia and making sure then they’re hosted in Australia and dealing with, you know, the requirements that an Australian charity organisation requires.

An example of that is Martus budgeting and planning. Martus budgeting and planning wasn’t in Australia. So, in 2019 when we started supporting Intacct, we went to the US and had conversations with Martus and actually then brought it to the Australian market and it’s been a huge success.

70% of all our Sage Intacct customers now use Martus and they love Martus. So it’s really around us cultivating, working out what our customers need, then going out to the US or going to the markets and then bringing those solutions in.

The other thing is that Sage Intacct has an open API. So, if we find a solution that doesn’t integrate, one of those vendors can actually then develop themselves an integration with Sage Intacct. And we’ve seen that a number of times where that’s actually taken place.

Tammy Ven Dange – Well I have to admit, I have one charity client that uses Sage and Martus and they love Martus. I’ve never heard a client love a budgeting tool, so you know, there has to be something done well there.

Nunzio Giunta – Look Tammy, I totally agree. I haven’t used Excel for budgeting and planning since 2003. So I developed in 2003 an access database doing budgeting and planning. It took me until 2019 to find a superior product than that.

I had looked for a long time and that was the Martus budgeting and planning. And so I ditched that at that point in time and have haven’t returned back. It’s been a fantastic product.

Considerations for Giuntabell clients using Sage Intacct

Tammy Ven Dange – So you seem to have a range of clients that can vary in size and if someone had to decide between the new finance system, we talked about some of the strengths of Sage, but especially for a small organisation.

What would be the criteria that they should consider if they’re going to consider Sage as a finance system or is it really that they’re considering you as a service provider and Sage just comes with it?

Nunzio Giunta – It comes down to the size of the organisation, the complexity of the organisation and ultimately who all the different stakeholders are reporting to.

Where something like Sage Intacct really starts to stack up in terms of investment is when you’ve got multiple stakeholders that you need to report to. And when you’ve got complexities of things like multicurrency or multi entity or things like you need to comply with the revenue recognition standards or you know, you wanna automate processes.

So, it’s really around starting from, and this is what I tend to do is I ask the question around who do you need to report to? Who do you need to report and what sort of information and who do you need to provide that’s gonna drive good decision making into that organisation?

When we start from that point, we can then start to paint a picture in terms of what do, we need in the finance system to deliver that information really quickly and what needs to happen?

We sort of reverse engineer it, what it actually then starts to determine is, you know, if it’s really basic information we need and there’s only one stakeholder or two stakeholders, maybe Xero or MYOB will do the job well.

But as soon as you need to start to report the different stakeholders and you need to carve that up in certain ways, then having something like Sage Intacct that is multi-dimensional where you can tag each transaction with the different values, that’s when it starts to flourish.

So I suppose it’s one of the things that we ultimately want to make sure that our customers have the right solution. We don’t want to impose something for the sake of it imposing because it’s an investment, it’s an investment of their time and so it needs to be fit for purpose, and that’s typically our approach.

Future work for Giuntabell

Tammy Ven Dange – Nunzio is there anything else you want to share about what you’re working on or any of your developments?

Nunzio Giunta – Yeah, so really some really exciting stuff we’re working on at the moment is, again, back to end of month close and how much I hate end of month close.

I’ve been the CFO of a number of NFP organisations in my career and that whole routine of end of month close and the stress it brings and you know, the making sure everyone’s doing what they need to do.

I’m always looking at everything we can do to take away the stress associated with end of month close and really at end of the day getting the data out to key stakeholders as quickly as possible to

Right at the moment, we’re rolling out a solution called FloQast. So FloQast is a end of month close solution. And so what it allows you to do is connect to your finance system and then what it does is it actually will draw down the trial balance and then allow to actually almost task orient your end of month close process. So assign it to the preparers, assign it to the reviewers, and then ensure that you’ve got all working papers associated with it.

Right at the moment, we’re rolling it out to all our outsource finance customers because we are responsible for the end of month close and, you know, we are doing the deployment at the moment and it’s really exciting.

Once we embed that in our organisation and doing that, we are then looking at bringing that out to our Sage Intacct customers where they’ll actually then embed that into their finance team. So that’s something that we’re really excited about and investing a lot of our time and working with FloQast to achieve.

Find out more about Giuntabell

Tammy Ven Dange – Well Nunzio, if people want to know more about you or the company, where should we send them?

Nunzio Giunta – Yeah, absolutely. So Nunzio Giunta, you know, I’m on LinkedIn and all my details are there so you can reach out to me personally or you can go to www.giuntabell.com.au. And so please reach out to us and we are here to help those finance professionals that have dedicated their career to the finance sector, sorry, the NFP sector. So please reach out.

Tammy Ven Dange – Nunzio, we’ll make sure to put those links on our website as well. Thank you so much for your time today and thank you for sharing more about what you guys do in Giuntabell and how you help Not for Profits. I really appreciate your time.

Nunzio Giunta – No, thank you Tammy, it’s been great.

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