Women to Women advances women’s rights by funding 130 women’s organizations in 10 countries. Founded in 1993 in response to the Yugoslav Wars, Women to Women began in the Balkans but has expanded to serve women in war-torn communities across Eurasia and the Middle East. We sat down with Katja Mannerla, Head of Accounting at Women to Women, to discuss their recent transition to Xledger.

Xledger:
Thank you for taking a minute to answer a few questions. Why don’t we start with the challenges that prompted your search for a new finance system. What were some of those?

Katja Mannerla:
For Women to Women, it was absolutely necessary to have an accounting system that could keep track of many grants for several hundred projects. It’s not just about exceeding the project budget. If we don’t utilize project funds, the consequence may be that donors no longer trust our assessments of needed donor support for each project. Reporting and monitoring at all levels needs to be simple, fast, and reliable.

Before, we estimate that it took two weeks to complete quality-assured reporting for a major project.

X:
What technical challenges did you face?

KM:
Women to Women is located in ten countries. With a traditional system, it would be impossible to distribute the financial work locally or establish functioning IT departments out in every one of these countries.

X:
So what led you to choose Xledger?

KM:
The key for us in choosing Xledger was donor reporting: Xledger made budget follow-per donor agreements possible. Instead of two weeks, with Xledger the whole project reporting process takes about three days. The primary reasons is that we get all the numbers with the touch of a button, but we also need to take fewer steps for quality-assurance. Xledger has created a dimension for donor agreements in the accounts.

With Xledger, we can get real-time control of the situation.

Also, we chose Xledger because the system is available everywhere. You don’t have to sit in the lap of IT support: everyone in the organization can use it. Local staff from all ten countries can be involved in our financial processes.

X: Thanks so much, Katja.

KM: You’re very welcome.