Build an NGO system around your funds, your field and your donors.
An NGO keeps two sets of books that must agree. One is money, split by fund and by donor. The other is work, counted in the field by a coordinator with a register and a phone.
They usually meet only when a report is due. Then somebody spends three weeks collecting spending figures, beneficiary lists and photographs from four coordinators in four formats, and the donor waits.
GullySystem can build a system that keeps the money and the work beside each other. The donation against the right fund, the receipt the same day, the activity recorded where it happened, and the report assembled from both.
Organisations we can build for.
A trust running one school and a society running six programmes on three grants report to different people, and the reporting is what shapes everything under it.
- Registered societies
- Public charitable trusts
- Companies registered under Section 8
- Education NGOs
- Health and nutrition NGOs
- Child welfare organisations
- Women’s collectives and rights organisations
- Livelihood and skilling NGOs
- Agriculture and rural development organisations
- Water and sanitation organisations
- Environment and conservation groups
- Disability and inclusion organisations
- Elder care organisations
- Animal welfare organisations
- Disaster relief organisations
- Corporate foundations
- CSR implementing partners
- Grant-making foundations
- Federations of self-help groups
- Faith-based charitable institutions
The modules, and what each one covers.
Nothing here is a fixed package. Each module is built, left out or changed to match how your organisation already works.
Donor records
One record per donor, which remembers what she gave and why she gave it.
- Donor profile
- Individual, company or institution
- PAN and address
- Communication preference
- First donation and last donation
- Total given
- Preferred cause
- Recurring commitment
- Receipts issued
- Reports sent
- Relationship owner
- Do-not-contact flag
Donations
- Donation received
- Matched to donor
- Assigned to fund
- Receipt issued
- Acknowledgement sent
- Recorded against the project
- Reported to the donor
A donor remembers a late receipt for years. The delay is almost never the receipt, it is matching a bank entry to a name, so that matching is where the system does the work.
Donation types
- One-time donations
- Recurring monthly donations
- Corpus donations
- Restricted and earmarked donations
- General or unrestricted donations
- In-kind donations
- Sponsorship commitments
- Event and campaign donations
- Payroll giving
- Foreign contributions
- Anonymous donations
Foreign contributions are received and kept separately under law. The system records them in a separate fund and a separate account, and what your organisation is permitted to receive stays a matter for your auditor and legal adviser.
Receipts
- Receipt number series
- Donation date and mode
- Fund and project
- 80G details where applicable
- Donor PAN
- Digital receipt by email
- Printed receipt
- Duplicate receipt request
- Cancelled receipts with reason
- Data prepared for the annual donation statement
The system prepares the data your auditor needs for the statutory donation statement and certificates. The filing itself, and what the law requires this year, stay with your auditor.
Funds
A CSR grant, general donations and foreign contributions are hard to keep apart in one long sheet with a colour code.
- Fund master
- Restricted and unrestricted
- Corpus funds
- Project-specific funds
- Opening balance
- Receipts into the fund
- Spending from the fund
- Closing balance
- Inter-fund transfer with approval
- Fund-wise ledger
Grants
- Grant name and donor
- Grant agreement and period
- Sanctioned amount
- Tranche schedule
- Deliverables per tranche
- Budget heads approved
- Permitted administrative share
- Reporting dates
- Utilisation position
- Extension and revision record
- Grant closure
Grant budgets
The budget line is the unit a grant is judged on, so spending is booked to it from the first voucher.
- Budget head and line item
- Approved amount per line
- Spent to date
- Committed but unspent
- Balance available
- Overspend alert
- Reallocation request
- Donor approval for reallocation
- Variance explanation
Utilisation reporting
- Spending recorded
- Booked to budget line
- Vouchers attached
- Period closed
- Utilisation statement prepared
- Reviewed internally
- Sent to the donor
Projects and programmes
- Project name and thematic area
- Geography and villages covered
- Start and end date
- Funding source
- Project team
- Targets set
- Activities planned
- Beneficiaries targeted
- Partner organisations
- Project status
Activities in the field
- Activity type
- Date and location
- Conducted by
- Participants
- Beneficiaries reached
- Materials distributed
- Photographs
- Expenditure incurred
- Notes from the coordinator
- Verification by a supervisor
Beneficiary records
Beneficiary lists arriving from different coordinators in different formats is how duplicates surface at the worst moment.
- Beneficiary profile
- Household and family members
- Village, block and district
- Category and vulnerability criteria
- Identification reference held
- Enrolment date
- Programmes enrolled in
- Services received
- Attendance and participation
- Exit or graduation
- Duplicate detection
Duplicate detection is a suggestion, not a verdict. Two people in one village genuinely share a name often enough that a coordinator should confirm before anything is merged.
Beneficiary data care
Field data is personal data, and the people in it did not choose to be in a database.
- Consent recorded at enrolment
- Access restricted by project
- Photographs held separately
- Children’s records with stricter access
- Export permissions
- Anonymised reporting view
- Record of who viewed what
- Retention rules set by the organisation
What you may collect, keep and share is your organisation’s decision and your legal adviser’s. The system enforces the rules you set, and it does not set them for you.
The field application
Built for a coordinator standing in a field with one bar of signal and forty minutes of daylight left.
- Today’s activity plan
- Enrol a beneficiary
- Mark attendance
- Conduct a survey
- Capture photographs
- Record distribution
- Note expenditure
- Location stamp
- Works without a network and syncs later
Offline entry syncs when the phone finds a network. Until then the office sees yesterday’s picture, and the screen says so rather than pretending otherwise.
Surveys and assessments
- Baseline survey
- Needs assessment
- Household survey
- Midline and endline survey
- Custom question sets
- Skip logic
- Photograph and document capture
- Enumerator record
- Survey status by village
- Data export for analysis
Outcome tracking
Outputs are easy to count. Outcomes are what the donor actually asked about.
- Indicator definition
- Target per indicator
- Measurement frequency
- Data source for each indicator
- Progress against target
- Disaggregation by gender and age
- Village-wise progress
- Indicator trend over time
- Narrative against numbers
Sponsorship programmes
Where a donor is matched to a child, a family or a unit, the relationship needs its own record.
- Sponsor and sponsored record
- Commitment amount and period
- Payment schedule
- Progress updates due
- Letters and photographs shared
- Consent for sharing
- Sponsorship lapse
- Replacement matching
- Sponsor communication history
Volunteers
- Volunteer profile and skills
- Availability
- Interest areas
- Background check record
- Assignment to an activity
- Hours contributed
- Training completed
- Feedback
- Certificates issued
- Volunteer to donor conversion
Events and campaigns
- Campaign name and purpose
- Target amount
- Channel used
- Registrations
- Donations attributed
- Cost of the campaign
- Volunteers deployed
- Media and photographs
- Follow-up with new donors
Donor communication
- Receipt and acknowledgement
- Thank you message
- Impact update
- Annual report
- Project-specific report
- Renewal reminder for recurring gifts
- Festival and occasion messages
- Lapsed donor outreach
- Preference and unsubscribe handling
A receipt and a yearly note on how the money was used can go to anybody who gave. An appeal is different, and a donor who has asked not to be contacted is excluded by the system rather than by somebody’s memory.
Donor reports
Assembled from records already in the system, instead of collected again from four people.
- Fund utilisation
- Activities conducted
- Beneficiaries reached
- Indicator progress
- Photographs from the field
- Case stories
- Financial statement per grant
- Report template per donor
- Version sent and date
Expenses and vouchers
- Expense entry
- Project and budget line
- Fund charged
- Voucher and bill attached
- Field advance
- Advance settlement
- Approval workflow
- Payment record
- Vendor details
- Unsettled advances
Assets and stores
- Asset register by project
- Funded by which grant
- Location and custodian
- Material stock at the centre
- Distribution material
- Issue to field
- Stock received as in-kind donation
- Consumption per activity
- Physical verification
Staff and field teams
- Staff and coordinator records
- Project allocation
- Cost split across grants
- Attendance
- Field visit record
- Travel claims
- Training record
- Reporting lines
- Exit record
Roles and access
- Governing body
- Executive director
- Programme manager
- Field coordinator
- Monitoring and evaluation team
- Fundraising team
- Finance team
- Volunteer coordinator
- Auditor with read access
- Donor with a limited view
Management dashboards
- Donations this month
- Donations by fund
- Recurring donors active and lapsed
- Grant utilisation position
- Reports due this quarter
- Beneficiaries reached by project
- Indicator progress
- Activities conducted
- Volunteer hours
- Unsettled advances
- Project-wise spending against budget
- Village-wise coverage
Integrations
- Payment gateways and donation pages
- Bank statement import
- Tally and accounting software
- WhatsApp, SMS and email providers
- Website donation forms
- Cloud storage for field photographs
- Survey tools already in use
Matching a bank statement to donors works from the narration the bank gives, which is often short and untidy. The system proposes matches and a person confirms them.
One connected workflow, end to end.
Every stage below can sit in one system, so nobody re-enters what the last stage already captured.
- Fundraising
- Donation received
- Fund allocation
- Receipt issued
- Project planning
- Budget approved
- Field activity
- Beneficiary enrolment
- Spending recorded
- Indicator measured
- Utilisation statement
- Donor report
- Renewal
You do not have to replace everything at once.
Each phase is usable on its own, so the system earns its place before the next part is built.
- 1
Donors and receipts
Donor records, donations, funds and same-day receipts. This alone removes the complaint most donors actually make.
- 2
Projects and grants
Projects, grant agreements, budget lines, expenditure against those lines and the utilisation position at any moment.
- 3
The field
Beneficiary records, the coordinator’s offline application, surveys, activities and indicator measurement.
- 4
Reporting
Donor reports assembled from existing records, volunteer management, dashboards and the accounting integration.
How a build actually runs.
- 01
Understand
We sit with your finance person and one field coordinator, because they hold the two halves of the same story.
- 02
Map
Funds, grants, budget lines, projects, indicators, approvals and every report somebody currently builds by hand.
- 03
Design
The field screens are drawn for a phone with no network, and the office screens for the person who answers the donor.
- 04
Build
Modules in the order that helps soonest, usually donations and receipts before anything else.
- 05
Test
One project and one grant run through it for a full reporting cycle before the rest moves.
- 06
Deploy
Go-live starts at the office, and the field application follows after the coordinators have been trained in their own district.
- 07
Improve
Indicators, surveys and donor reporting templates are refined as the next grant cycle begins.
Systems we can put together for you.
- Donor management systems
- Donation and receipt platforms
- Fund accounting support systems
- Grant management systems
- Project and programme management systems
- Beneficiary management systems
- Field data collection applications
- Survey and assessment tools
- Monitoring and evaluation dashboards
- Volunteer management systems
- Sponsorship management systems
- Donor portals
- Campaign and event systems
- Multi-project NGO platforms
Questions owners ask before starting.
What is custom NGO management software?
It is software built around one organisation’s funds, grants, projects and indicators, instead of a donor tool and a spreadsheet that never agree. The custom part is usually the reporting each donor insists on.
Can receipts go out the same day?
Yes, once the donation is matched to a donor. Bank entries can be imported and matched with a person confirming, so the receipt does not wait for a monthly reconciliation.
Can it keep CSR, general and foreign funds separate?
Yes. Each fund has its own ledger, and spending is booked to a fund and a budget line from the voucher onwards rather than sorted out later.
Can field staff enter data without a network?
Yes. Enrolments, attendance, surveys and photographs can be entered offline on a phone and synced when a network is found.
Can it prepare donor reports?
Yes. Utilisation, activities, beneficiaries reached and indicator progress can be assembled from records already in the system, with a template per donor.
Does it handle 80G receipts?
It issues receipts carrying your 80G details and prepares the donation data your auditor needs. Filing and what the law requires this year stay with your auditor.
Can it stop duplicate beneficiaries?
It flags likely duplicates by name, household and village. A coordinator confirms before anything is merged, because two people in one village genuinely do share a name.
Is beneficiary data kept private?
Access is set by project and by role, photographs are held separately, and views and exports are recorded. What you collect and share is your organisation’s decision, and the system enforces it.
Can donors see anything themselves?
Yes, if you want that. A donor view can carry receipts, contribution history and project updates, with the depth of access decided by you.
Will it work with Tally?
Usually yes. Donations, expenses and fund-wise entries can pass to Tally so your accountant continues working the way she does now.
Can we start with just donors and receipts?
Yes, and most organisations should. Get donations, funds and receipts working first, then grants, then the field.
Can it be shared with our implementing partners?
Yes. A partner organisation can be given access to its own projects and beneficiaries and nothing else, which is usually easier than collecting files from them.
How we work with this trade.
Build a system where the money and the field finally agree.
An NGO is judged twice. Once on what it did in a village, and once on what it can show a donor three months later, and the second is usually harder than the first.
Take your last donor report and trace three figures in it back to a village. If that walk is an easy one, your books are in order, and the field application is the only piece missing.
Tell us how your ngos runs today.
We will tell you what can be digitised, what can be connected, what is worth automating, and what you should leave alone.
- No obligation
- We reply the same working day
- Your details stay private