How AASK has professionalized their reports

Time. 

It’s the one thing every financial controller runs short of. Month-end hits, the reports need formatting, the figures need double-checking. Someone always spots an error — and suddenly you’re redoing everything from scratch. 

Even with heavyweight systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central already in place, for most, financial reporting still ends up being slow, heavy, and fiddly. Especially when you're under pressure and trying not to lose sight of the bigger picture.

At AASK, financial reporting used to mean one thing: hours lost to formatting.“Before Exsion, our reporting was slow.” Says Mary Ellen, AASK’s controller. “Each report had to be manually manipulated to give it a finished look and consistent appearance to submit to the finance committee, board of directors, our CFO and CEO.”

And it wasn’t just about making things look nice. “Our biggest inefficiencies were formatting. The reports… just didn't have any kind of consistency, and certainly didn't have a financial look to them.” That meant more time on columns, fonts, and layouts — less time analysing the actual numbers.

Worse still? Small mistakes meant starting again. “Especially if you did the report, and then there was a small minor error, you'd have to redo the report —and it was all about formatting.” 

It added up quickly. “I would say the old process was cumbersome, slow, and outdated.” And with around 30 reports due every month, the pressure was constant. “I kind of dreaded month's end because I knew it 
was going to take about two days of my time.”

A plug-and-play shift 

​After years of slow, clunky reporting, AASK found Exsion Reporting — a tool built to work with Business Central, not against it. The onboarding? Instant. “I was able to start using the reporting system within weeks from when we first got started,” says Mary Ellen.

For a small team with a big mission, being able to build reports without calling IT was a game changer. No more trial and error. No drama. “I think one of the biggest strengths is that it works every time.” From the very first run, she knew: “The first report you helped me with showed that this was going to really be a time saver for me.”

The result

• Reporting time cut by 20 hours monthly. Rapportagetijd is maandelijks met 20 uur verminderd​. What used to take two full days now takes just a few hours. For Mary Ellen and the team at AASK, automating their reporting wasn’t just a time-saver — it was a complete shift in how they work.
• AASK has reusable templates, so that they don't have to rebuild everything from scratch each month. “Most valuable tool for us has been the formatting—that you can format a financial report the exact way you need it and then use it over and over again every month.”
• With one-click, AASK has all the data formatted and refreshed. “Really, the biggest difference now is that it's time-saving. Instead of taking two days to do these thirty month-end reports, it literally takes me several hours.” And if someone catches an error? No stress. “If one of my team members finds an error, it's easy to fix one or all the reports fairly quickly.”
• Better reporting, stronger impact. With 20 hours saved every month, AASK’s finance team now has more space for planning and strategy. Clear reporting supports better decisions — and better decisions help more children.​​

Reliable reporting also helps when it comes to audits and board updates. Now, AASK’s team delivers full  reports with all the right numbers in place. That means fewer surprises — and stronger oversight. 

Because in Mary Ellen’s words: "You can't run a nonprofit without clear financials." Good reporting isn’t just admin. It builds trust, shows impact, and helps organizations stay on mission.

About AASK

AASK stands for “Aid to Adoption of Special Kids”.

Founded in 1988, AASK was Arizona’s first licensing agency dedicated to kinship care — placing children with relatives or close family connections. Since then, the nonprofit has helped more than 4,000 children find permanent homes, with an astonishing 95% placement stability rate.

Unlike traditional adoption agencies, AASK focuses on children, who are often overlooked — older youth, sibling groups, and children with emotional, developmental, or physical needs.​