Finding grant funding success with better payroll and reporting

Finding grant funding success with better payroll and reporting

Seattle-based Wellspring Family Services is a non-profit working to end family homelessness. Delivering this important mission relies heavily on grant money to fund the programs to help the families they serve. Every penny counts, and when Wellspring found themselves failing audits, their grant money was put at risk. They turned to ADP® for help.

Business Challenges

• Funding agencies needed documentation that showed where and how grant money was being spent
• Manual processes were causing failed audits and holding up fund allocation
• Keeping track of where employee’s spend time across grants was cumbersome

By adding the ADP Timebank/Grant Allocation feature to their ADP Workforce Now® solution, Wellspring was able to properly track and report employee hours across grants which better informed their funders, delivered error-free audits and ensured a constant flow of funding.

Solving a reporting issue

Budgets are always tight for non-profits, and they often rely on reporting out of their payroll and accounting systems to help them get and keep their funding. In order for funds to be released, Wellspring needed to show how grant money was being spent, but gaps in their reporting was causing them to fail audits.

“We were using general or fixed percentages to show salary allocations, but our funders needed to see the actual hours employees were working on each project. Because of this, funds were not being released, which in turn, caused a lot of problems for us.”

Without the proper funds, Wellspring would have trouble operating and paying employees. “We knew that if things carried on the way they had been, we would eventually be put in a spot where we were going to have to dip into our reserve, or worse, not be able to pay our employees.”

ADP’s Grant Allocation feature enables Wellspring to prove what they are billing with reports that show the exact amount of hours an employee works on a contract. Gone are the days of HR having to go back and forth between them and the employee to confirm hours worked. Now, they’re passing audits and getting funds released on time which has been a huge help when it comes to budgeting.

“It’s been a huge success. We passed our first audit with flying colors and are getting our contracts paid in a timely manner. Now everything is accounted for which is huge!”

Solving payroll complexities and simplifying audits

Wellspring has over 200 pay codes to charge against their 50 contracts that Debbie was manually handling in-house. In addition to that, she was overseeing four to five audits a year—spending a week and half for each of them gathering information.

Since implementing ADP, Debbie now spends about two hours getting information ready for an audit. ADP provides much of the information she needs which helps her avoid going back and forth with the auditors. Because the reporting is readily available, Debbie said auditors “ask for a whole lot less information now.” Most importantly, she feels confident knowing everything is validated through ADP.

Success starts at implementation

Having an implementation specialist who knows the ins-and-outs of your industry goes a long way in setting you up for success. They can help you avoid pitfalls and bring attention to areas that you might not have considered. Debbie experienced this firsthand:

“I don’t know what we would have done without our implementation specialist, Marlene. She was very knowledgeable about the nonprofit space; she knew what to do, what not to do and really held our hand through it. Since we’ve been up and running, everything’s been working like a charm!”

Recommending ADP for other non-profits

ADP Timebank Grant Allocation feature was made with non-profits in mind because it drills down and reports salary hours/earnings by grant, by role, by which project is being worked on and redistributes overtime earnings across grants for hourly employees. It’s something that has been invaluable to Wellspring, and according to Debbie, is helpful for other non-profits:

“It saves time. Reporting can be confusing, especially across multiple grants. When you have ADP to help, they take the guesswork out of things and help you provide what the funders really need.”