Sparkrock in Action: A Week in Meg’s Life   

You don’t have to be technical to lead digital transformation  

Meet Meg

Meg Wilson (4) (2)

 

We don’t just serve nonprofits. We come from them. Today, Meg is a Senior Sales Executive at Sparkrock. Previously, Meg was a Director of Finance at a national nonprofit, managing over 100 cost centers across diverse programs. Her responsibilities included financial statements, budgeting, business process design, audit readiness, and leadership of the finance team. 

When the organization decided to overhaul its IT systems, Meg took the lead. She paused her day-to-day finance role to manage the entire transformation project; replacing servers, software, and processes from the ground up. She negotiated contracts, led data migration, ran testing, and delivered training. It wasn’t just a technology shift. It was a way to build better reporting, stronger controls, and more efficient operations. 

Meg wasn’t a “technical” person. But she knew how to solve problems, rally people, and ask the right questions. That’s what made her the right person to lead. And it's why today, she helps Sparkrock customers do the same. 

Sparkrock in Action: A Week in Meg’s Life

It’s not always easy to picture what digital transformation really looks like. That’s why we’ve created a fictional week in Meg's life; based on real experiences from her time in the sector. While the days are imagined, the impact reflects what’s possible with the right tools. 

MONDAY | Stop Big Spend Surprises Before They Happen 

Meg rushes to the gym after work and knocks a pile of folders off the table. Receipts scatter across the carpet. She picks up a $1,499 receipt and sighs. 

She thinks back to the old days at the training center. Staff booked conference travel and other big-ticket items, then submitted expenses after the fact—hoping for approval. Finance reviewed the spend only after it hit the budget. 

Now, Sparkrock catches spending before it starts: 

  • Staff submit large expense requests in advance
  • Pre-approvals lock funds to the right budgets
  • The system updates remaining balances in real time
  • Finance sees what’s coming before anyone makes a purchase 
Product Features: Procurement-to-Pay

TUESDAY | Audits Shouldn’t Be a Scramble 

Meg warms up leftover chili and opens her laptop. Audit season used to mean chaos: digging through binders, sorting through spreadsheets, and scrambling to match journal entries with backup. 

Auditors needed constant support. Her team dropped everything to find receipts and explain transactions. That changed with Sparkrock. Now, audit prep happens automatically: 

  • Supporting files like PDFs, Excel sheets, and scanned receipts are attached to each journal entry
  • The audit trail logs every action: who made it, when it happened, and why
  • Auditor licenses give external reviewers secure, read-only access without delays or interruptions 

Meg doesn’t waste time tracking down documents. Everything is in one place. The team keeps working, even during audits. 

This year, the only thing heating up is her chili. 

Product Features: Business Central Audit Trails, Document Attachments, Auditor License 

WEDNESDAY | Faster Budgets, Faster Close  

It’s Wednesday morning. Meg sips her coffee and reviews the latest budget upload. 

Years ago, she spent hours consolidating budgets across 100 cost centers. Formula errors, retyping, formatting issues—it all added up. Now, she finishes in minutes. 

She remembers the day her team cut their month-end close time in half. They dropped a nonprofit-specific system that felt rigid and slow. They moved to a Microsoft-based platform with stronger structure, real-time reporting, and cleaner integrations. 

With Sparkrock, Meg uploads budgets quickly and gives her team the tools to manage their own. Finance no longer holds up the process. Managers can review, plan, and adjust without waiting. 

Every program manager works with current data and tools like: 

  • Excel import in a few clicks
  • Power BI for instant analysis
  • Role-based budget views to support faster decisions 

Product Feature: Excel Import, Dimensional Finance 

THURSDAY | Board Reporting Without the Squeeze 

Meg used to spend days on board reports—lining up numbers across spreadsheets, checking for errors, and building summaries by hand. Her old system relied on a segmented general ledger that made reporting rigid and complicated. To track short-term funding, she had to create entirely new accounts. 

Now, Sparkrock’s dimensional finance model makes reporting easy. 

  • Meg filters data by dimension: program, funder, department, and more 
  • She adds a custom dimension when she needs to track something unique
  • She builds reports in minutes and shifts her focus to strategy 

Today, Meg sees a gap in funding for language support in day programs. She adds the issue to the board deck and pulls a list of grants that could help fill it. Her old system couldn’t support ad-hoc reporting. Every custom report meant either a request to IT or the vendor. Or she’d have to export data, rebuild everything in Excel, and hope the numbers held up—usually too late to act on. 

Now, she builds and saves custom reports herself. No tickets. No wait times. No extra costs. What used to take hours and external help is now quick, reliable, and fully in her control. 

Product Features: Budget Reporting, Dimensional Finance, Power BI Integration 

FRIDAY | A Holiday Means a Real Break 

It’s Friday morning, and Meg doesn’t set her alarm. It’s a long weekend, and for once, she isn’t packing a bag full of paper. 

She remembers when time off didn’t really mean off. She brought home folders of files and finished reports from her kitchen table. 

Now, she leaves folders at work at work. Everything lives online. If needed, she can log in from her phone, tablet, or laptop—but most days, she doesn’t need to. 

  • Staff check their own budgets
  • Managers approve without looping in finance
  • The system answers routine questions 

Meg closes her laptop and walks away, ready to make the most of her day off. 

Product Features: Self-Service Access, Real-Time Budget Visibility, Cloud Access 

Real Impact, Real Results  

  • Faster, Simpler Financial Reporting: Canadian Museum of History reduced reporting time by 288,000%. What once took three people two full days now takes one person less than a minute. Read the Success Story. 
  • More Efficient Payroll Processes: Action Group eliminated 600 handwritten timesheets every two weeks. Payroll is now digital, and the team has reallocated the equivalent of 1.5 full-time roles to higher-impact work. Read the Success Story. 
  • Quicker Employee Reimbursements: District School Board of Niagara (DSBN) used to take two weeks to reimburse staff. Now it often happens in under a week, with some processed in just 24 hours. Reimbursement time has been cut nearly in half. Read the Success Story.
  • Streamlined Chart of Accounts: Polycultural Immigrant And Community Services reduced their Chart of Accounts from 42 pages to just 2. Payroll now takes a third of the time it used to. Read the Success Story. 
  • Significant Annual Savings: DNSSAB saves $50,000 per year with Sparkrock 365. They also shortened their reporting timeline from 30 days to just 2. Read the Success Story.

Why Finance Leaders Choose Sparkrock

  • Rectangle 284

    Procurement-to-Pay

    Control spending before it happens with pre-approvals, tracking, and audits.
  • Rectangle 284

    Built-In Audit Trails

    Capture documentation, conversion logs, and compliance details in one place.
     
  • Rectangle 284

    Dimensional Reporting

    Tag by cost center, program, or project, without extra manual steps.
     
  • Rectangle 284

    Microsoft Integration

    Familiar tools, real-time sync, and a platform that scales with your team.
     

“Generating the quarterly reports for the Board used to be incredibly stressful for the entire finance division. But that’s not the case anymore."

Linda Hurdle
Chief Financial Officer
Canadian Museum of History
Reach out to a Sparkrock Expert today
Get in Touch

Read about other Success Stories

  • canadian-museum-of-history

    Read the Canadian Museum of History Success Story

    How Canadian Museum of History Streamlined Finance and HR and Reduced Reporting Time by 288,000% with Sparkrock 365.
    Read their Story
  • canadian-baptist-ministries

    Read the Canadian Baptist Ministries Success Story

    How Canadian Baptist Ministries Streamlined Operations with Sparkrock 365.
    Read their Story
  • how-rehoboth-christian-ministries-saved-thousands-in-government-2

    Read the Rehoboth Christian Ministries Success Story

    How Rehoboth Christian Ministries Cut Payroll Time from Days to Hours.
    Read their Story
All Rights Reserved
Sparkrock 365© 2025