Mark Lawrence — CPA (Director of School Accounting and Shared Accounting Services), Diocese of Dallas
For dioceses, financial reporting is about much more than producing statements and spreadsheets.
Chancery leaders need timely, accurate information to support parish and school leaders, identify potential risks early, and make informed decisions that advance the mission of the Church.
For the Diocese of Dallas, managing financial information across dozens of schools, parishes, and other entities once required significant manual effort. Valuable time was spent collecting data, logging into multiple accounting files, building reports, and formatting presentations.
By implementing Qvinci, the Diocese of Dallas standardized reporting, improved visibility into financial performance, and dramatically reduced the time required to produce meaningful financial insights.
Today, leadership spends less time gathering information and more time supporting the people and ministries that depend on it.
As Director of School Accounting and Shared Accounting Services for the Diocese of Dallas, Mark Lawrence, CPA, is responsible for helping provide financial information to leaders across the diocesan ecosystem.
That responsibility becomes increasingly challenging when financial data is spread across numerous accounting files and locations.
The problem that Qvinci solves for me is, with 100+ QuickBooks files, searching aimlessly for a needle in a haystack. Whereas [with Qvinci] I can get the data… and see the patterns out of one system that just syncs in with QuickBooks, and it’s regularly getting the data updated.”
— Mark Lawrence
CPA (Director of School Accounting and Shared Accounting Services) — Diocese of Dallas
Before Qvinci, obtaining a complete picture often meant logging into individual QuickBooks files, exporting reports, consolidating information, and manually building reporting packages.
Lawrence explains his challenges in looking at data for the diocese’s schools: “If I didn’t have Qvinci, I would have to log into 26 QuickBooks files and pull the reports individually in Excel, export them, and then put them together in Excel… Just logging into 26 QuickBooks files and logging out takes an incredible amount of time.”
Like many dioceses, the Diocese of Dallas faced several common challenges:
The Diocese of Dallas implemented Qvinci to create a more efficient, standardized approach to financial reporting and analysis.
Rather than spending valuable time collecting and organizing information, the Diocese wanted a solution that would automate reporting and provide leadership with actionable insights. Using Qvinci, the Diocese developed standardized reporting packages that can be generated for schools, parishes, and other entities with just a few clicks.
These packages include financial statements, charts, graphs, monthly analyses, KPIs, forecasts, and other business intelligence tools designed to help leaders better understand financial performance.
“Our parishes, our schools, our retirement home as well, when they do their close, they can run this report [customized package]. It takes less than two minutes. It would take me more than a day, and I consider myself good at Excel, to try to reproduce this in Excel.” – Mark Lawrence
Just as importantly, the Diocese wanted reporting that could be understood by more than accountants.
Many pastors, principals, finance council members, and volunteers do not have formal accounting backgrounds. Qvinci’s color-coded (red = unfavorable / green = favorable) visual reporting tools make financial information easier to understand and act upon.
Today, the Diocese of Dallas relies on Qvinci to create comprehensive reporting packages that provide meaningful financial insights for leaders at every level.
According to Lawrence, “Part of our big standardized package incorporates a ton of different charts, graphs, monthly analyses, and KPIs that Qvinci already has built into its software. What we encourage finance councils to do is look through and find the one that speaks to them in the way they learn and the way they take in the data.”
This approach helps transform financial reporting from a compliance exercise into a communication tool.
Visual reports and dashboards help leaders quickly identify trends, understand performance, and engage in more productive conversations, resulting in greater transparency, stronger collaboration, and better-informed decision-making across the diocesan ecosystem.
By leveraging Qvinci, the Diocese of Dallas has achieved significant benefits across its ecosystem:
And Lawrence was pleased to point out that “This [Qvinci] resulted in no layoffs… Instead of spending hours, they’re just clicking a button and getting a beautiful report.” He goes on to share that, “I also just think about diocesan employees as well here in the Diocese of Dallas. If we can automate reporting, and a parish manager gets to spend Saturday with his or her family instead of with his or laptop, that’s a huge savings, that’s a huge win.”
Babcock said, “Now that we have data that we can rely on, what’s the story? What’s the action we’re going to take? And the action is not the same for everybody.”
For the Diocese of Dallas, Qvinci has become much more than a reporting solution.
It provides the visibility, standardization, and efficiency needed to support informed decision-making throughout the organization.
As Lawrence summarizes, “To me, if you can work and get a pre-bottled report out and get it standardized and going at all your entities, the time savings for your business managers, your parish accountants, and school accountants makes the price more than worth it.”
By transforming manual reporting into trusted financial insight, the Diocese of Dallas is able to spend less time managing spreadsheets and more time supporting the mission of the Church.
Watch Zachary Stein, Financial Analyst with Paul Davis Restoration, share with Brad Adams, Qvinci CEO, President, and Chairman, why their franchise uses Qvinci.
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