Meet Mission Assistant: A faster way to understand your financial data in Aplos

Nonprofit finance teams are responsible for turning financial data into decisions that move their missions forward. But getting a clear answer isn’t always simple.

Answering a question like “How are we tracking against our budget?” or “How much have we spent from this fund?” can mean finding the right report, applying the correct filters, and interpreting the results. For experienced finance professionals, that takes valuable time. For board members, approvers, and other occasional Aplos users, it can be difficult to know where to begin.

That’s why we built Mission Assistant in Aplos—a new AI-powered chat experience that helps you ask questions about your organization’s financial data and get fast, clear answers based on your Aplos reports.

Mission Assistant is now available in beta for all customers on Core or Advanced Subscriptions. Its available to help nonprofits explore their financial information more easily, spend less time digging through reports, and get oriented faster when questions arise.

Log In to Try Mission Assistant in Aplos

Ask questions in plain language

Mission Assistant offers a more conversational way to interact with your financial data.

Instead of starting with a specific report, you can start with the question you need to answer. For example:

• “What is our current financial position?”
• “How are we tracking against our budget this year?”
• “What were our expenses last month?”
• “How much has been spent from a specific fund this year?”
• “Are our expenses trending up or down?”

Mission Assistant uses the reporting data available to you in Aplos to help answer your question, summarize relevant information, and guide you toward the underlying reports or data points you may want to review.

You can also ask follow-up questions to refine your request, compare time periods, or explore the information in greater detail.

Why we built Mission Assistant into Aplos

AI tools can make it easier to ask questions and understand complex information. But nonprofit financial work requires more than a generic answer. It requires context, appropriate access controls, and a clear path back to the underlying financial data.

That’s why Mission Assistant is built directly into Aplos.

Your financial context is already there

Mission Assistant is designed to work with the reporting data your organization already uses in Aplos. You don’t need to move information into a separate tool or rebuild the context behind your question.

It meets you in your existing workflow

You can open Mission Assistant from the pink button in the bottom-right corner of Aplos, ask a question, and continue working while it processes your request. When relevant, Mission Assistant can also help you open reports so you can review the underlying details.

It helps your entire team explore financial information

Not everyone who needs financial information knows which report to run or which filters to apply. By letting people begin with a simple question, Mission Assistant can make financial data more approachable for bookkeepers, finance directors, office managers, board treasurers, approvers, and other authorized users (based on a user’s permissions).

Designed to support financial review, not replace it

Mission Assistant is intended to help you find and understand financial information more efficiently. It does not replace your organization’s review processes, financial expertise, or professional judgment.

The current experience is read-only. Mission Assistant cannot create, modify, delete, or approve accounting records on your behalf. When an answer informs a financial decision, you should continue to review the underlying reports and source data.

This approach reflects an important part of how we’re building AI at Aplos: it should help your team move faster while preserving the visibility and control that financial work requires.

What beta means

Mission Assistant in Aplos is currently in beta and is being actively developed. During this period, minor errors, incomplete answers, or unexpected behavior may occur as we learn from customer usage and feedback.

Mission Assistant is available for free for a limited time during the beta. No action is required to enable the feature.

Your feedback will help us understand which questions and workflows are most valuable to nonprofit finance teams—and where Mission Assistant should go next. As you try it, please continue to review underlying reports before making financial decisions.

An early step in a larger Mission Assistant vision

The chat experience in Aplos is the first step toward a broader vision for Mission Assistant across Velora.

Nonprofit and charitable organizations often have important information spread across accounting, fundraising, outreach, and reporting tools. Over time, our vision is for Mission Assistant to help teams make sense of that work, understand trends, surface useful insights, and move through key workflows more easily.

We’re starting in Aplos because financial reporting is both essential and often time-consuming to navigate. By giving users a simpler way to explore their reporting data, we can make AI immediately useful while learning how to build an even more connected experience for nonprofit teams in the future.

Try Mission Assistant in Aplos

To get started, sign in to Aplos and select the pink Mission Assistant button in the bottom-right corner of your screen. Choose a suggested question or ask your own question. We’re excited to see how Mission Assistant helps your team find answers faster, and how your feedback shapes what we build next.

Already a customer? Try Mission Assistant in Aplos

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Mission Assistant in Aplos is currently in beta. The experience is still being improved, and minor errors or incomplete answers may occur. Please review underlying reports and use your own judgment before making financial decisions.