On November 19, nonprofit finance leaders came together around a very specific problem: 

“How do we stop living in exported spreadsheets and start using Sage Intacct and Excel together in a way that actually reduces risk and rework?” 

That was the core of Future in Focus: Excel Your Planning & Forecasting, a virtual conference for nonprofits using Sage Intacct. 

If you joined us live, think of this as your field guide to putting what you saw into practice.
If you missed it, this is the “stealable” version of the best ideas from the day. 

In about 6 to 8 minutes, you will get: 

• 3 concrete plays to cut “Copy & Waste” between Sage Intacct and Excel
• How your peers are turning funder templates and board packs into live, refreshable reports
• A real story of a nonprofit CFO shrinking close time from 10 to 12 days down to 2 with Velixo and Sage Intacct 

TL;DR: Your 3 Plays

Play 1: Stop exporting and start refreshing.  Use Velixo to turn Excel budgets and close packs into live views of Sage Intacct instead of static exports.

Play 2: Design funder reporting instead of brute forcing it. Map funder templates to your chart of accounts and dimensions once, then pull data directly from Sage Intacct.

Play 3: Take control of nonstandard funder reporting. Use templates, nonfinancial data, and Smart Links so unusual layouts, date ranges, and bases do not throw your whole process into Excel chaos.

Let us look at each play. 

Play 1: Stop Exporting and Start Refreshing 

In this section, we look at how to use Excel and Sage Intacct together for live budgeting and a faster month end close. 

The day started to click during “Budgeting 101 for Nonprofits: Budget Smarter, Not Harder.” Harry Lewis, Customer Education Manager, began in Excel and showed how quickly Velixo appears and connects. 

Once Velixo is installed, you get: 

• A Velixo ribbon in Excel instead of a confusing IT project
• More than 80 Sage Intacct aware functions sitting next to SUM and VLOOKUP
• Modern Excel features like Dynamic Arrays doing the heavy lifting on account lists, dimensions, and periods 

Harry’s message was clear: if budgeting lives in static exports, you are stuck in the “Copy & Waste” loop. That means exporting, changing, emailing, and exporting again every time someone touches a number. 

 With Velixo and Sage Intacct, you can instead pull account ranges, entitles and dimensions from Sage Intacct with a single formula. With this, you can build deprtment and program budgets in Excel templates that refresh with the latest data, instead of going stale and use writeback so adjustments and allocastions go back into Sage Intacct, rather than staying in hidden tabs. 

Field note: chasing the zero-day close 

No one made this more real than Rob Caluori, CFO of Westchester Library System. On the roundtable, he described his team’s journey: “As a CFO, I am chasing the zero-day close. Before Velixo and Sage Intacct, we were closing in 10 to 12 days. Now we are down to two.”

That kind of change does not come from a better export. It comes from replacing ad hoc spreadsheets with standard Velixo workbooks. Letting those workbooks pull real time data from Sage Intacct instead of using hard coded trial balances. Reducing how often someone has to ask, “Can you send me the latest version?” 

For a CFO, this is not only about closing faster. It also increases staff capacity, strengthens audit readiness, and improves board confidence at the same time. 

Try this right away 

Pick one of these as a pilot and convert your most painful close workbook, such as cash, consolidations, or key KPIs into a Velixo powered Excel file that refreshes from Sage Intacct. Alternatively, build one department or program budget as a live Velixo template instead of a static Excel model. Then track how many fewer exports you run, how often your team asks for “the latest version”, and how much closer you can move to Rob’s 2 day close. 

Play 2: Design Funder Reporting, Not Brute Force It 

This section focuses on turning funder templates into live, Sage Intacct driven reports so grant reporting stops being a manual grind. 

The session “Turning Sage Intacct Data into Funder Ready Reports: Grant Reporting Without the Grind” focused on a pattern everyone in the chat recognized. Funder budget templates use their line items, not yours. Their award periods rarely match your fiscal year and every change means another round of manual exports and late night Excel work. 

As Jim Norton, CPA, explained: “Programs submit a budget, working with the funder, and in no way, shape, or form does it align to your chart or dimensions.”  On calendars, he added: “Your grant or program reports have an award period, which may or may not align with your organization’s fiscal year.”  Most organizations handle this with brute force: custom reporting periods, one off reports, and a lot of manual Excel work. 

Jim called out the cost of that approach: 

• Audit risk when numbers drift or tie outs are unclear
• Relationship risk when funder reports are late or inconsistent
• Staff burnout from rekeying data into forms that do not match the system 

 The shift he argued for was simple but powerful. Stop treating funder templates as odd one offs. Treat them as design problems you can solve once and reuse. 

 With Velixo and Sage Intacct, the pattern looks like this: 

1. Take the funder’s template as it is, with all the columns and line items. 
2. Build a simple mapping  that links each funder line to one or more accounts ,the project or grant and include any other Sage Intacct dimensions you need. 
3. Use Velixo functions to pull actuals and budgets directly from Sage Intacct. Filter by project start and end dates instead of by hand-built reporting period and push budget and forecast adjustments back to Sage Intacct with zero imports or rework using write-back. 
4. Click Refresh when something changes instead of re exporting everything. 

 The funder’s template stays in the format they expect, but it behaves like a live report connected to Sage Intacct. 

Why auditors like this 

During our panel, Alejandra Jensen of GRF CPAs & Advisors explained what this looks like from an audit point of view. She told attendees that the move to integrated systems and “more real time reporting, is improving transparency” for boards, funders, and regulators. 

When grant schedules are driven from the same live data as the general ledger, her team spends less time reconciling and more time actually reviewing the numbers. That leads to smoother audits and better relationships between finance teams and auditors. 

Try this before your next grant cycle 

Choose one active grant that has a painful funder template and will need reporting in the next 90 days. Turn that template into a live Excel front end on Sage Intacct which includes one mapping tab, one Velixo powered data tab and the original funder template as the presentation tab, driven by the data tab. Then compare the time and stress of producing the next report to your last cycle. 

Play 3: Take Control of Nonstandard Funder Reporting 

Here, we cover how to handle odd funder layouts, nonfinancial data, and mixed accounting bases using Velixo, Sage Intacct, and Smart Links. 

The advanced session “Follow the Funder’s Lines: Mapping the Mission” and the closing roundtable looked at what Jim called the next level headaches: 

• “Use my exact layout, not yours.”
• Nonfinancial data in funder reports, such as units served, locations, and headcount
• Reports that mix accounting bases, such as budgets on accrual and actuals based on billed or cash 

Jim described the first problem clearly;“Funders or governments often will dictate their own format that you have to follow exactly for reporting. A non-standard report layout is often any ERP financial report writer’s worst nightmare.”  Instead of fighting this inside your ERP or falling back to manual Excel, you can accept the layout as the user interfact, use Velixo and Sage Intacct to power the data and rules behind the template and pull non-financial data from Sage Intacct or other systems into the same workbook so you are not mixing manual counts with system numbers. 

On the mixed basis problem, Jim pointed out; “Budget might be on an accrual basis, but actuals are based on what you have actually billed to the funder, not necessarily the same timing as when revenue or expense is in the general ledger.”  Native general ledger reports alone cannot handle this. You need a layer where you can reconcile and present those numbers in the way the funder expects while still protecting your accounting integrity. 

Smart Links: closing the loop 

One of the most powerful moments of the day was seeing Smart Links in use. Instead of saving templates on someone’s desktop or in a mystery folder, you can: 

• Add a “View in Excel with Velixo” link directly inside Sage Intacct
• Click that link from your budget list, grant record, or report
• Open the correct Excel file, already set up with the right project or record 

As Jim said, with Smart Links in place you have a full “circle of life” between systems. That closes the loop between Sage Intacct, your Excel front-ends and the people who need to use them, including finance, grants, programs and development teams.

From our final panel, Alejandra Jensen also talked about the impact on audit length and effort. She shared that many audits are getting easier “because of this automation that we are seeing across the board.” When her team can“get into Intacct to pull reports” instead of chasing static spreadsheets, it leads to“significant time savings on their end as well.” That also means fewer last minute schedule requests for your staff. 

Try this in the next 60 days 

Identify one recurring report that has a painful layout with at least one field of non financial data, a habit of going out of date quickly. Take that opportunity to turn it into a Velixo powered template, and add a smart link in Sage Intacct to open that template from the most relevant screen. This simple change can remove several email threads and “Where is the latest template?” conversations every month.