Integrating Your CRM and Financial Accounting Systems: Why It Matters Now More Than Ever

When it comes to financial data, accuracy is everything. Not only does accounting data integrity matter for annual reporting and auditing, but financial transparency is also increasingly important to donors. Because of this, more organizations are finding it essential to connect financial and accounting systems with their fundraising CRM.

In this article, we walk you through the value of connecting your finance and accounting systems with your CRM, along with the top considerations for when you do so. With a fully integrated ecosystem, your organization can close its books faster, become more accountable and focus on what matters: your mission.

Why financial accounting integration is important

Nonprofit organizations have more technology tools than ever. In our 2025 Nonprofit Technology Ecosystem Trends Report, we shared that 90% of social good organizations report using three or more third-party tools for fundraising. Since 2012, the number of tech platforms catering to nonprofit organizations has tripled. Organizations are embracing this trend toward adopting tech tools to increase efficiency.

Similarly, social good organizations have more sources of revenue than ever before. Not only do organizations rely on grants, donations, and government funding, an increasing number of organizations also get revenue through activities like selling tickets for events, hosting classes, and selling goods. Accepting digital donations is no longer a nice-to-have, but rather an essential part of any fundraising team’s operations. Technology is an important part of fundraising operations, a trend that won’t be going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

Having a complex tech stack comes with data challenges, especially for finance teams. Each platform for collecting donations, selling tickets, hosting events, and managing program fees creates data that is valuable for your organization. Information like donor names, addresses, gift designation, and gift might live in a platform like Classy, Donor Drive, or Fundraise Up, without a straightforward way of making it back to your CRM where it’s needed for reporting and donor stewardship. Similarly, financial data from fundraising platforms also needs to make its way to your financial accounting system for reporting and reconciling. Yet moving data into a general ledger or subledger is complicated—even more so when there are several systems for financial transactions at play.

Difficulties with managing transactional data

The proliferation of data from third party tools creates distinct challenges with managing transactional data. Financial teams have a trickier job than ever managing data from multiple sources accurately and efficiently. First, each third-party tool exports data in slightly different ways, making it difficult to get data into a CRM in a uniform way. In addition, managing data requires often means managing spreadsheets—a notoriously error-prone method for information transfers. One misplaced decimal can mean the difference between $100 and $1000. Finally, there’s the problem with dual data entry: entering financial data in a CRM and duplicating that in a general ledger or subledger, all of which creates added work for a team.

Worse yet, with error-prone dual data entry, it’s common for the data in your accounting platform to differ from what is in your CRM. Operating with unreliable data is something every nonprofit finance team should avoid.

How data integration transforms finance and fundraising workflows

Fortunately, there are alternatives to manual data management between your organization’s financial systems and your CRM. One of the most popular options for organizations is investing in a data integration software solution, like Omatic Cloud. Advantages of integrating your accounting data with your CRM include:

Better Data Integrity: An integration solution will properly format and transfer data automatically, eliminating the need for manual intervention and human error.

Standardized Data: With the right integration solution, you get to decide all your formatting conventions and apply them to all your data automatically any time you move information between systems. This means all your data, from street abbreviations to currency standards, will have consistent formatting no matter which system it came from. Ensure consistent data across platforms while meeting the formatting requirements of your general ledger.

Automatic Posting: Instead of carving out time each week or month to post to your general ledger, you can benefit from automatic transfers from your CRM to your accounting system. Post more frequently, and more quickly, so you and your colleagues have access to timely data.

Reduced Clutter: A proper data integration tool will only transfer the information you need and leave the rest. Ignore extraneous data points and focus on what matters for reporting.

Collaboration Across Teams: There’s no easier way to lose a colleague’s trust than by passing along inaccurate information. With better data, everyone wins. When a colleague in donor relations needs to report on the use of a fund to a donor, it’s important that the data is not only true, but up to date. Plus, data standardization makes it so that everyone speaks the same language, whether they work in a financial services role or not. For example, a finance team may care more about the cash on hand, whereas a fundraising team may care about accruals—counting pledges for future gifts.

Improved Reporting: Having fresh, accurate data at your fingertips makes reporting easier than ever. Benefit from having the ability to share fundraising progress, cash in hand, and growth trends with leadership and colleagues. Good data for regular impact reporting makes the case to donors that your organization is trustworthy and deserving of continued support. It also decreases the risk of data inaccuracies during audits.

What to consider when planning your data integration

Data Alignment Across Platforms

When you decide to connect your accounting system and CRM, it’s important to make sure that teams who use each system are aligned on which data should be shared, where it’s coming from, and how it will be used. It’s also important to meet and discuss specific use cases so everyone understands the proper terminology and nuances involved. Agreeing on terms and definitions at the beginning of a project will save you valuable time throughout. You don’t want to find out at the end that what you mean by the word “fund” in Raiser’s Edge NXT is different from the word “fund” in an accounting or finance system.

Data Mapping

You and your colleagues will want to understand the movement of data between systems. Discuss what data you need from your CRM and accounting systems, where they need to go, and then produce a tactical document with that information in greater detail that explains where each data element from the source system needs to go within the destination. Discuss which transformations—standardized modifications to your data—are needed including currency symbols, abbreviations, other standards for formatting.

Current Data Flows and Information Gaps

An integration planning discussion is also an excellent time to assess your current data processes and identify any gaps. Perhaps there’s a custom field you will need to build for your integration or a transformation you would like to have that you have never gotten around to building. Make a complete list of any changes your team needs to make that will make it easier to host data in your CRM.

Consistent Testing

The success of your financial accounting system integration depends on frequent testing. You and your team will want to make sure you test every scenario and use-case for moving data from your CRM to your accounting system and vice-versa. Don’t leave this step until the end: iterative testing with each phase of the rollout will help you catch issues early. Get testing support from colleagues across your organization and have many departments share feedback—this will help with adoption and will get valuable buy-in early on during the process.

Conclusion: Make the Most of Your Investment in Technology by Unifying Your Data

More data means more data management. If your organization has made an investment in third-party systems for ticketing, fundraising, and other sources of revenue, it’s crucial that you have a strategy for moving all this financial data between your CRM and accounting systems efficiently and accurately. With timely, accurate, and complete financial data, your organization will build trust between your development and finance teams and your key stakeholders. And with the time your team saves, you’ll be able to focus on the most important work: your mission.

Ready to integrate your financial systems and your CRM? Get in touch today!