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“This has been the most ambitious project Enclude has ever delivered and the most rewarding. I believe the staff of Enclude and the Archdiocese of Dublin, working together, have created the best integrated Pastoral Management and Accounting solution of any Diocese anywhere in the world”.

Eamon Stack, CEO Enclude

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ARCHDIOCESE OF DUBLIN – CASE STUDY

Challenge

The Archdiocese of Dublin has 207 parishes and a central administration office. Until 2015, all parishes recorded their own parish records, pastoral and financial. Summary financial accounts were submitted to the Archdiocese central office as simple income and expenditure accounts. Minimum pastoral information – i.e. numbers of baptisms, confirmation and marriages – was also provided. Despite the limited nature of reporting the accumulative cost of this approach was expensive, as many parishes had professional accountants providing booking and accounting services.

As of 2015, all parishes were required to provide audited accounts to the Charities Regulator, in line with the new Charities Act. It was decided, in Dublin, that this would be best achieved in one single audit of the whole Archdiocese. A new streamlined parish financial accounting solution was proposed. The Archdiocese decided to be more ambitious and create a common Pastoral Management and Accounting for all parishes with the capability to aggregate both pastoral and financial data across the Archdiocese.

Solutions

Enclude proposed an Integrated Pastoral Management and Accounting solution. The solution has two main parts,

1. Salesforce CRM to deliver Pastoral Management and income recording, and
2. AccountsIQ to record expenditure and financial reporting.

The project began in February 2015 and the pilot group of 7 parishes went live in April. After the pilot phase, changes were made to the solution for the full scale rollout begin in July.

Major tasks had to be competed:

• All parishes were set-up in both Salesforce CRM and Accounts IQ with respective integrations.
• Parish financial totals on July 1 were uploaded for each parish
• Parishioner records, Families and individuals, standing order data and envelope details were added to the Pastoral Management solution.
• Contributions made from individuals and families for 2015 year to date were also uploaded.

Benefits

The most attractive feature of the new solution is that parish income, family contributions and weekly collections etc are entered into the Pastoral Management system and automatically pushed into the AccountsIQ system. The bank reconciliation in AccountsIQ confirms the accuracy of the transactions and the pastoral management system manages the cash float. This double lock ensures the authenticity of the records and fulfils a vital controls needed by the audit.

By February 2016, all parishes had their 2015 Annual Accounts completed and bank accounts reconciled on the new Pastoral Management system.

With the new demands of the Charities Act, many Dioceses focused exclusively on the financial aspect to parish work to meet the requirements of the charity act. Dublin Archdoicese saw the opportunity for a holistic solution. While the accounting solution was being rolled out, a group of priests, pastoral staff, and Archdiocese head office staff worked with ENCLUDE to design the pastoral features of the new system. The first rollout involved focused on Baptism and Funeral records and parish calendars. Marriages and Confirmation were later added to the feature set. The rollout of the pastoral side of the system is taking place in 2016 and expected to continue to 2017.

“This has been the most ambitious project ENCLUDE has ever delivered and the most rewarding”, wrote Eamon Stack CEO of Enclude. “I believe the staff of ENLCUDE and the Archdiocese of Dublin, working toghether, have created the best integrated Pastoral Management and Accounting solution of any Diocese anywhere in the world”.

Archdiocese of Dublin Archbishop’s House
Drumcondra Road
Dublin 9
Phone (01) 8379253
www.dublindiocese.ie