The United Service Organizations (USO) has moved its core finance operations onto Sage Intacct, according to a Sage customer story. The Arlington, Virginia, nonprofit supports service members and their families worldwide. Its finance team had relied on manual processes, slow bank reconciliations, and labor-intensive reporting.
Intacct replaced much of that manual work with templates, imports, bank integrations, and role-based controls. Sage reports that bank reconciliations now take about three days instead of five or six, and the monthly close runs roughly a day and a half shorter. Finance gained a clearer view across the organization and can give program leaders more timely information.
From Manual Reconciliation to a Shorter Close
The USO’s programs span regions and settings where needs shift quickly. Finance has to move money to where it is needed while keeping controls in place. Diane Fraber, vice president and controller, and Michelle Turner, senior director of accounting, lead that work. “At the USO, stewardship is part of the mission,” Fraber said.
Before the move, routine accounting absorbed a large share of the team’s effort. The case study describes heavy data entry, slow reconciliations, and some processes that still depended on paper or workarounds.
Intacct changed the mechanics of that work. Templates and imports now handle entries that staff once keyed by hand, and integrations with banks and other systems remove further manual steps. Finance can also see which items are waiting, which are approved, and what comes next.
Sage reports the results in cycle time. The case study says the streamlined daily work saves the team days each month, time it can put toward supporting the rest of the organization.
Permissions and Visibility Support Oversight
Stewardship at the USO means showing donors and leadership how funds are used. Turner said the organization owes that accountability to donors, leadership, and the people it serves, and needs systems that support it.
Intacct supplies part of that structure through role-based permissions. Sage’s case study says stronger permissions support separation of duties, the control practice of splitting a transaction’s steps among different people.
The same system gives finance a clearer view of activity across the organization. That view lets the team give program and department leaders timely information, and the case study says budget owners now get answers they can act on.
Turner also described a change in how the USO spends. The organization has narrowed its offerings to core programs, she said, moving money away from programs that reached only a few service members at about $500 per service instance. That money now funds programs that serve many more people. The case study presents this alongside the system change but does not describe how finance data shaped those decisions.
Intacct supplies the permission structure and the reporting data. Role design, and the choice of what budget owners see, remain finance decisions.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
Treat reconciliation as an early close lever. The USO’s reported close gains began with bank reconciliation, which fell from five or six days to about three. ERP teams can track reconciliation time separately and automate feeds and matching early, freeing close days without redesigning every finance process.
Define roles before widening access to finance data. The USO pairs role-based permissions with timelier information for program and department leaders. ERP teams opening financial reporting to budget owners can settle role design first, giving leaders faster answers while separation of duties stays intact.
Build budget-owner reports around spending decisions. Turner described moving funding away from programs serving relatively few people at a high cost per service instance. ERP teams can design reporting around the measures leaders actually use to compare programs and redirect resources.
