Araize FastFund Online vs. Microsoft Dynamics GP

I have found FastFund to be a flexible yet easy-to-use accounting and donor support software. Of course, it does not have all the power of something like SalesForce, but then again, I don't need that and my more technically challenged users would be overwhelmed with something like that. FastFund allows us to track donor support, issue receipts for tax purposes, and even record notes of interactions with donors. We create mailing lists and can easily allocate donations to the specific project as designated by the donor. We use FastFund for our accounting software. We pay bills, make deposits, cut checks, and allocate expenses to the appropriate projects. We also use the newest module of FastFund which is the Payroll module. I am not involved with using that module, but I do know that it is great to have everything in one package.

Incentivized

It does accounting really well, it does payroll not so well. I say this because when you get into states that have complicated payroll laws like California, overtime calculations are hard to setup and get right. Same goes for other states when they do out of the normal pay structure like piece rate pay. It does HR, A/P and A/R really well and we have had no issues on that side; just payroll when it comes to certain states and how we do anything that is not salary or hourly.

Incentivized

• Cloud-based so all our employees have access to it from their various remote locations.
• Fund-based accounting.
• Ongoing training on updates and improvements and tech support responses are quick and useful.

Incentivized

• User friendly interface
• Able to be extended into multiple areas of your business
• One feature we have been using for a few years is EFT for payables - it has significantly reduced the time spent paying vendors and reduced our check printing and mailing costs. It is very easy to setup and use.

Incentivized

• Initial use of the new payroll features had several hiccups that had to be addressed.

Incentivized

• Having an integration between Project Accounting and Field Service would be amazing! There are so many companies that have service technicians that perform work on a customer's contract but also have a need for project accounting functionality within that customer's contract. Right now those modules are separate so you either need to use one or duplicate some efforts if you need to use both.
• Microsoft Dynamics GP could do a better job documenting their new enhancements to the product. They realize great enhancements but the documentation about them, or new products, is lacking so it is difficult as a consultant to know everything a new feature can do for me and my customers.
• They could enhance their forecasting capabilities with a new forecasting tool within Management Reporter.

Incentivized

We are satisfied with the software and on-going costs. Moving to something else would be an investment and cost that would be difficult to justify given our satisfaction with FastFund.

Incentivized

Due the economic challenges that Puerto Rico is having, the company has had to merge some companies in order to be more efficient. It has been easy in GP to process those merges, even thought we had to spend days to accomplish that the process was smooth and accurate. In addition we were able to streamline the purchasing and sales process and the organization is confident to keep renewing GP for the future versions.

Incentivized

I find FastFund to be easy to use and, for the most part, intuitive in its user interface and options. Sometimes new features are added or updates are made which causes some changes. Araize is good at holding short webinars to introduce these.

Incentivized

Overall usability of the older model is not quite so user friendly for the basic bookeeper, but at an accountants level we can generate all the necessary reports and create Sales Orders, Purchase orders and invoices - though it is a bit redundant to enter the sales and purchase orders separately instead of being able to convert a sales order directly to a puchase order by applying a price book like the newer versions can.

Incentivized

I have always had my questions and issues responded to very quickly and addressed in a timely fashion. Araize is good at notifying us when the support desk will be closed for company holidays and the like. They are responsive to suggestions for new features and in helping when we have questions.

Incentivized

The rating is directed to the thrid party serive provider that we use. I do not now how good the Microsoft direct support is.

Incentivized

Basically the challenge with this implementation was the Business Portal, too many errors and even the aplication is up and running the users are still having issues. We will start planning the migraton to GP 2015 soon.

Incentivized

Araize FastFund was already implemented when I joined the organization so I cannot comment on how it compares to other products or why it was selected.

Incentivized

Because GP doesn't do CRM we have looked at D365 Customer Engagement for our field service, and F&O as a replacement. Vaporware, no direct upgrade path, and if you want to continue with GP for your back office and just use Field Service it's an insanely complex integration import/export. D365 F&O is a huge implementation cost, and without a direct migration path every bit of data has to be custom imported. There really is no straightforward way to stack up GP against these programs currently. Again, the future of GP is in some doubt.

Incentivized

The functionality that GP and related ISV solutions offer and the ease of integration of GP to other systems makes it an extremely scalable solution

Incentivized

• Our main users are in three different physical locations and Araize FastFund has allowed each user to easily have access to what they need.

Incentivized

• If implemented properly, the product can save many hours of data entry time - specifically by setting up integrations of large data sets.
• Many times the underlying business process must be adjusted to accommodate software limitations. By being flexible, a company can leverage their users' skills in combination with GP to make data entry faster and more efficient. I have seen many companies eliminate the need for data entry personnel as well as reallocate employee hours to more skilled positions such as reporting and analytics.
• Poor implementations, on the other hand, can cause employees to hate their jobs and the software. This isn't specific to GP but to the software industry in general.

Incentivized