Recently we held a contest to see which FellowshipOne team member could develop the best and most useful Insights Visualizer dashboard. While it was a friendly competition, it helped highlight how this product could best help our customers. Over the next few weeks, we will be featuring the work of the top three winners.
The third place award went to Finance Coordinator Matthew Wickline, who has been with F1 for three years. Being a finance specialist, Matthew’s dashboard is an in-depth look at contributions. Its main purpose is to manage your contributions, where they are coming in, what method are they coming in by, and to see if a church’s attendance/worship numbers are influencing those contribution numbers.
We asked Matthew a few questions about his process in developing this dashboard.
How did you come up with the idea?
MW: My main area of expertise at FellowshipOne includes Billing, Accounting, and Finance related functions and as such my first instinct with Visualizer was leveraging it as a tool to analyze specific cash flows for churches.
How easy it was to develop?
MW: Conceptually I think development of the dashboard was fairly simple. The complexity of the dashboard comes into play when churches decide what, and how they want to analyze and forecast financial data for their given church. I think those in the Finance/Accounting realm will have a fantastic time with Visualizer as it provides great flexibility with how you report and what you are reporting on.
Did you hit any snags along the way?
MW: As with all financial data, reporting on it can be difficult – you need to ensure your values are presented in a manner that is useful to you/those you are presenting to. I wouldn’t consider it necessarily a ‘snag’, but most of the reporting on this dashboard is very ‘tip of the iceberg’ kind of reporting that could be done from a finance perspective. In order to take this report to the next level, the church would have to identify what pieces of their financial reporting are most important to them – so they can create more customized reporting to dive deeper into those values and get a more thorough understanding of their cash flow.
Who do you think would most benefit from using this kind of dashboard?
MW: The Accounting or Finance departments or the volunteers assisting the church with keeping finances in order. Potentially the lead Pastor at a church if the congregation is on the smaller TWA (Total Weekly Attendance) range.
Learn more about FellowshipOne Insights and Visualizer here.
