TRAVERSE is the Answer for Notable Non-Profits

Many people think of Goodwill as a place that sells used clothing and household items. But as Jackie Freeze will tell you, Goodwill Industries is much more. Jackie is the CFO at Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont in Charlotte, North Carolina. "Our goal is to help people with vocational barriers gain employment and independence," says Jackie. Goodwill has been serving people in the region for over three decades. Through innovative job training and employment services, more than 15,000 individuals have acquired the skills necessary to move beyond government dependency and into financial independence and enhanced self-esteem.

Although Goodwill is a non-profit organization, they have a unique business approach that has enabled them to earn their own way while helping those they serve do the same. More than seventy-five percent of Goodwill's operation revenue is generated through highly successful entrepreneurial activities, such as their eleven retail stores. There they sell donated items as well as a small quantity of new goods to the general public; the net from this operation goes back into programming and overhead. Some of the clients they serve are in paid training or work experience programs in the retail stores. Goodwill also has a number of governmental contracts with county and state agencies to train and help move the people they serve into more self-sufficiency: "A number of our clients work in a manufacturing-type environment in which they are paid and also learn valuable work skills," says Jackie. "We also work closely with the financial community, training some of the people we serve to take positions in the banking environment."

Jackie and her accounting staff were processing transactions in batches on a mainframe computer via communication with the corporate headquarters. Jackie began searching for a new accounting system just before Goodwill International announced that they would no longer process the general ledger and subsidiaries. "We wanted additional flexibility anyway-as it related to all of our systems-and better analysis capabilities we needed," says Jackie. "We started looking at vendors who provided PC-based applications that could be networked."

Goodwill Industries International hosted a CFO Conference in Washington, D.C. and invited a number of accounting software vendors to do presentations for its members. Even though Jackie had evaluated systems from Great Plains, MIP and SAGE (MAS 90), she selected TRAVERSE from Open Systems, Inc. Jackie made her final decision after a demonstration by Maureen Williams from Applied Business Services in Gaithersburg, Maryland. It was a decision based not only on the demo, but also on article research and conversations with Maureen Williams and her staff as well as other TRAVERSE users. "I was convinced it was the route to go," says Jackie.

The General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Bank Reconciliation and Fixed Assets TRAVERSE applications are now in use at Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont. The flexibility of the TRAVERSE source code enabled Applied Business Services to create custom financial statements tailored to Goodwill's detailed reporting needs. Another modification written by Applied Business Services seamlessly links Goodwill's ADP Payroll Service to TRAVERSE General Ledger.

"One of the major benefits of using TRAVERSE has been the reduction in processing time," says Jackie. "Along with that has come improved efficiency in terms of staying on top of problems and issues that come up in our environment. Any information that has been entered into the system via subsystems or directly is immediately accessible. This is particularly useful when circumstances require close monitoring and I need to know exactly where we are financially. We can deal with variances and questions during the month rather than waiting until we get everything in at the end of the month. It makes the actual month-end closing process with the production of reports much more expedient. The accessibility to prior year data for comparability is readily available s well."

Jackie likes being able to see the status of accounts at any point in time during the month. "We have immediate access to budgets," she says. "Budgeting is much more flexible because amounts can be easily shifted between months, new operations can be incorporated when appropriate, and modifications and changes are much easier to handle. Going forward, I hope to utilize the budgeting capabilities of TRAVERSE to do some "what if" analysis. But we're already light years ahead of where we were."

Thirty-two Goodwill offices now use Open Systems, Inc. software products. In the next several years, the Southern Piedmont office plans to add the TRAVERSE Purchase Order and Job Cost applications. As they move into more distant territories, they plan to expand their existing system. In addition, they will be looking at more data interfaces with TRAVERSE, particularly for their retail division.