About CVSA
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) is a nonprofit organization comprised of local, state, provincial, territorial, and federal commercial motor vehicle safety officials and industry representatives across North America. CVSA aims to prevent commercial motor vehicle crashes, injuries, and fatalities through guidance, education, and advocacy for enforcement.
Background
CVSA Executive Director Collin Mooney always recognized the importance of employing new technology and the potential impact it could have on the organization and its commercial motor vehicle inspection and related enforcement/awareness programs. For example, a new inspection standard and procedure was designed and launched to govern inspections of commercial motor vehicles equipped with automated driving systems (ADS), also known as autonomous or driverless vehicles. He also understood the efficiencies leveraging technology could bring to the accounting operations he oversaw.
When CVSA experienced exponential growth post-COVID and a talent shortage due to the retirement of a long-time accountant, Mooney found himself on a journey to explore various platforms that could be engaged while also identifying the best model for outsourced accounting that would work seamlessly together. Along with outsourcing certain functions to platforms, like payroll to ADP, CVSA opted to engage Cherry Bekaert’s Accounting Services team to establish greater continuity of its accounting operations.
However, working in collaboration between the government and the industry to improve road safety and save lives, CVSA required a more robust financial management system to address its complex grant accounting needs. Ultimately, CVSA chose to implement Sage Intacct, a cloud-based accounting and financial management software, as the technology solution to best meet their needs, replacing their QuickBooks Desktop environment and further stabilizing the organization.
Cherry Bekaert played a crucial role in the successful implementation of Sage Intacct, enabling CVSA’s existing in-house team to carry out daily administrative accounting operations with enhanced efficiency, such as payroll and indirect cost rate allocations. The Outsourced Accounting Services team also continued to provide accounting services for high-level tasks, including month- and quarter-end close, credit card reconciliations, and depreciation and investments. This approach provided CVSA with the keen business acumen and attention to detail needed to meet their accounting needs while allowing Mooney to focus on the organization as a whole.
Challenges
Before the retirement of CVSA’s nearly 30-year accountant, all accounting functions, including payroll and the preparation of tax forms, were handled in-house. However, these tasks were completed with little integration into technology platforms that could streamline operations in the accountant’s absence. This resulted in the ineffective use of the remaining employees’ time trying to complete these tasks. In an attempt to alleviate these issues, CVSA first outsourced its payroll to ADP. Then, expenses through Expensify. The lack of integration and the manual nature of these tasks led to inefficiencies and potential errors in the financial management process.
Due to contractual reporting obligations for grants and contracts with the federal government and a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), CVSA had to run its payroll twice. While they were using ADP to process the payroll, they also had to run a dummy payroll in QuickBooks to capture the necessary details (timesheet hours by grant) for calculating indirect cost rates and for grant reporting. This approach, while effective, was redundant and inefficient.
CVSA was also facing a challenge with a grant requirement called uncompensated overtime, which is a federal government-wide regulation. This requirement mandates that if an employee works over 40 hours, their salary needs to be diluted by the extra hours worked. This is to prevent overbilling the government for a 24-hour day, for example. To comply with this requirement, CVSA had to extract everyone’s hours from QuickBooks into a spreadsheet and manually calculate the salary adjustment. This was a time-consuming and tedious process, and also left many calculations and final reports outside of the accounting system.
Solutions
From compliance reporting to generating outcome metrics and providing real-time visibility, Sage Intacct allows nonprofit organizations to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on what really matters—achieving their mission. But perhaps one of the most crucial features of Sage Intacct, and one that was of importance to CVSA, is that it is a true cloud technology with open API that allows the organization to track metrics central to their operations and programs by leveraging key data from other existing and/or future systems including payroll.
ADP Payroll Integration
By switching its payroll software from ADP Run to ADP Workforce Now, which offers more customized options and integrations, CVSA is now able to unify accounting, payroll, and human resource activities for better insights and faster processes. The synchronization of the two platforms allows data to be shared instantly between them, eliminating manual entry, duplicate data, or manual re-entries.
Dynamic Allocations
Through Dynamic Allocations, Sage Intacct’s automated allocations software, CVSA’s complex allocation calculations, including indirect costs, revenue recognition, and assets and liability amounts, can now be simplified and streamlined. Allowing for increased productivity, Dynamic Allocations offers:
- Easy set-up and repeatable allocations to save time
- Automatic corrections to avoid post-period adjustments
- Comparison allocation methods to drive strategy
- More transparency with a rock-solid audit trail
Results
Thanks to the collaboration between Sage Intacct and Cherry Bekaert’s Outsourced Accounting team, CVSA is now better equipped to handle the day-to-day management of its nonprofit organization. With the adoption of this technology, CVSA has significantly reduced the time spent on administrative accounting tasks, allowing them to focus on ensuring the continuity and stability of the organization. Additionally, the implementation of Sage Intacct has given CVSA reason to be optimistic about the future of their audit process, as they expect it to be much smoother than prior years. Ultimately, this sense of progress and technology evolution for CVSA is both inspiring and motivating for the future as they continue their mission to improve road safety and save lives.
It (Sage Intacct) saved us time. It’s getting us more efficient. We’re cleaned up… As we’ve evolved over the past 30 years, it was time for a restart and cleanup. Technology has improved dramatically, and we needed to as well.”
- Collin Mooney | CVSA Executive Director
A Technology-Driven Approach to Outsourced Accounting
Cherry Bekaert is a certified Sage Partner and Value-Added Reseller (VAR) that provides comprehensive support for your financial management needs. Our professionals are available to assist you throughout the entire process, from purchase and implementation to customization and ongoing support. Our technology partnership with Sage Intacct, along with our Outsourced Accounting Services, enables not-for-profit organizations to access best-in-class Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions and receive cost-effective, scalable, and
high-quality accounting services that are both timely and accurate.
We work in a very fast environment already, and Cherry Bekaert is very responsive. So, I really appreciate that—where we can work through things quickly and keep things moving.”
- Collin Mooney | CVSA Executive Director
