How to Find Spreadsheet Bottlenecks in Nonprofit Budgets in 7 Steps
When your budget cycle drags on for weeks (or months, in some cases) and department heads dread opening shared files, ...
Read More1 min read
Megan Alba
July 17, 2026
Apartment Life is a faith-based nonprofit that partners with apartment communities to help residents build meaningful relationships with their neighbors. The organization's on-site coordinators have supported more than 1.3 million units and 3 million residents nationwide, and its work has been shown to improve resident satisfaction, retention, and online reputation for the apartment communities it serves.
Before Martus, Apartment Life relied on spreadsheets to manage its budgeting process — leaders across the organization submitted their numbers manually, which Controller Diana Lovett then had to compile by hand, a process that was both time-consuming and prone to error.
Since adopting Martus roughly three years ago, Apartment Life has streamlined that entire cycle, giving its divisional leaders real-time access to budget data and freeing up significant staff time each year.
"Martus Solutions has transformed the way our business handles budgeting and forecasting. The platform's intuitive tools make the entire process a breeze, saving us valuable time and reducing errors."
— Diana Lovett, Controller, Apartment Life
Before Martus, Apartment Life managed its budgeting and forecasting entirely through spreadsheets. Each divisional leader submitted their own numbers, which Diana Lovett, the organization's Controller, then had to manually compile into a single budget. The process was slow and heavily manual, which left significant room for error at every stage of consolidation.
Apartment Life has now been using Martus for budgeting and forecasting for about three years. The platform replaced the organization's manual, spreadsheet-based process with automated rollups and self-service reporting for its divisional leaders.
Diana has witnessed a significant transformation in their financial management processes since implementing Martus: a meaningful shift in how her team and divisional leaders operate day to day, with less manual work and faster access to the data they need to make decisions.
Adopting Martus has helped Apartment Life revolutionize their approach to budgeting and forecasting by delivering intuitive tools that save time, minimize errors, promote real-time data access, streamline processes through automatic integrations, reduce costs per user drastically—all while offering robust customization options catered to their specific needs.
When your budget cycle drags on for weeks (or months, in some cases) and department heads dread opening shared files, ...
Nonprofit finance leaders face a constant balancing act: tracking restricted funds, coordinating across departments, ...
You’ve seen the looks. The glazed-over eyes. The polite nods. The “Can we circle back to that?” deflection when you ...
I've come to believe that uncertainty, handled well, can be a gift. Not because it's easy, but because it forces you to ...
Church board reports should do more than show what happened financially. They should help leaders understand why it ...
GREENVILLE, S.C., July 15, 2026 — Martus Solutions today announced that founder Bill Cox is transitioning from his role ...
Martus Solutions LLC (“Martus”) collects information you submit in this form and certain information about your device and use of this page. We use that information to respond to your request, schedule and personalize any demonstrations, manage our sales relationships, operate and improve our website, protect security, conduct analytics, and market our services.
Certain online identifiers and website activity may be shared with advertising and analytics partners for cross-context behavioral advertising.
Martus does not intend to collect sensitive personal information through this form. Do not enter account passwords, government identification numbers, financial account information, precise geolocation, or other sensitive personal information into any field.