Customer Success Story with Habitat For Humanity

We recently sat down with Mike Criner, the Chief Operating Officer for Habitat For Humanity Metro Denver to find out more about their experience with Velixo – an Excel-based reporting software for Acumatica, MYOB Advanced and CEGID.

Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit organization working in over 70 countries, focused on empowering local communities by providing decent and affordable places to live.
Founded in 1976, Habitat For Humanity has helped millions of people find a place to call home.

Operating in the greater Metro Denver area, Habitat for Humanity not only builds homes but is also a Mortgage lender, with a major retail operation (home depot and thrift stores) and a Human Services branch, advocating for affordable housing and helping to create sustainable neighborhoods.

The Challenge

Having previously used Quickbooks, Habitat for Humanity moved to Acumatica, as they grew dramatically and needed more enhanced capabilities in their ERP system.

“Our challenges with the different businesses we operate is we could find things that worked well with construction management but didn’t work well in retail. Things that worked well in retail didn’t work well with the analysis required for a mortgage lender, and the non-profit reporting added a whole new layer to that. We found that Acumatica had the flexibility to work with all of our different business lines.  And Acumatica with Velixo is great  for project reporting.”

The Missing Link

After a year of using Acumatica, Mike realized the need for an Excel Based reporting tool, so Mike spoke to their Implementation Partner Intuitive Solutions.
With employees on construction sites and in retail stores, Habitat For Humanity needed a solution that reliably brought in the data and was easily accessible from mobile and desktop devices. Also with a team that is not specifically accountants or working with reporting day today, the product needed to be easy to use, in a familiar interface, and use live data.

According to Mike, being able to use Excel with all of the employees has significantly improved their flow of information and made reporting easy.

“Honestly installing Velixo was just as easy as downloading off the website, restarting excel, and then starting to use the function calls. From that standpoint, it was very simple! It’s so quick to be able to create a report.”

In their trial period, Mike and his team created lots of production reports, such as variance reports. These were then given to department managers and all they had to do was pick their department and the month and Velixo would automatically populate the report with accurate data such as budget, actuals, variances, and more.

“We really look at Velixo as our reporting tool to take data out of Acumatica and package information to help us make better decisions. Acumatica with Velixo gave us the breadth to handle all of the different aspects of our business in one financial package.” 

The Outcome

Since implementing Velixo with Acumatica, Habitat for Humanity Metro Denver has seen major reporting improvements for their entire team.

“Velixo was able to let us separate out our retail business, so we could do a P&L and divide them into donated goods or purchased goods. It gave us and our audit partners the confidence to let us accurately report on our sales, expenses, and net income. It’s allowed us to grow our purchased good sales… it’s gone up to 40% of our total business revenue and in the past, it was less than 10%. So that revenue growth goes back into our housing programs, allowing us to serve more families in the Denver area.”

With unlimited User Licensing, the entire team at Habitat For Humanity Metro Denver has benefited from Velixo. According to Mike, key decision-makers have once again started looking at their business in a new light.

“Our decision-makers were so constrained and stressed for years, that they just quit asking, They knew we couldn’t create the reports, so they stopped asking, stopped thinking about new ways to look at their business.
Since we moved to Velixo, we create new reports and now they can look at their business in one way, and it has just started to open their eyes up to the capabilities of reports, or that you can see their data differently. We have the capability to create that for them inside an Excel spreadsheet. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

With 750 million people across the globe, using Excel each day, it’s no surprise that many businesses want to continue reporting in this great tool.

For Habitat For Humanity, whose team needed a simple yet sophisticated product, an Excel-based tool like Velixo was the key.

“In my mind Excel is a really powerful decision-making tool, a great reporting tool, with all of the capabilities inside there, which we need to leverage. It’s something that all of our staff have been through office training. Being able to pull that data directly into an Excel spreadsheet is a huge bonus for us. It’s bringing it into an environment we are really comfortable with, making it really easy to manipulate the data, create templates and new spreadsheets. We like the power and functionality.” 

We would like to congratulate Habitat For Humanity for the work they do day to day, to make the world a better place. We are proud that Velixo supports them on their journey.

Watch Mike’s interview now!