If you are searching for Epiconcept NGO, you are most likely equipping the support functions of an international solidarity organisation: field accounting, donor reporting, national staff payroll, stock management.

The useful question is not which one is better. It is which scope each solution covers, and what happens when you make them work together. This article compares the Epiconcept NGO offering with Abvius, based on the information each vendor publishes.

1. Who is Epiconcept NGO?

Epiconcept NGO is a French software vendor based in Paris, offering management software for the support functions of NGOs and international solidarity organisations. Its portfolio consists of three separate applications.

SAGA — accounting and finance

You enter organisational budgets and donor funding, record the related income and expenditure, track the budget and produce multi-currency donor reporting. SAGA is installed locally, runs in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and is available on Windows only.

Homère Classic — human resources and payroll

National staff management, contracts, leave, timesheets for allocating time across donor budgets, and salary calculation compliant with the legislation of each country of operation. Also installed locally, on Windows, in French, English and Spanish. A next generation, Homère Connect, is announced as being in preparation with an early access programme.

SAGA Stock — pharmaceutical stock management

Three tools, three scopes, three installations, each one to be deployed workstation by workstation and site by site.

2. Why Abvius is not a competitor to Epiconcept NGO

Abvius is a modular ERP designed for NGOs and their local partners, whatever the country of registration. Accounting frameworks and payroll rules are localised country by country, well beyond the French-speaking world. On paper the scopes overlap with Epiconcept: accounting, payroll, budget tracking. In practice, the two solutions answer different questions.

Epiconcept answers: how do we keep the accounts and payroll of a field mission using locally installed applications?

Abvius answers: how do we stop the donor from refusing to reimburse an expense, and how do we produce every required report from a single entry?

These are two different problems. And crucially, the SAGA product page itself provides for interfacing with head office ERP systems to ensure information system interoperability. That is exactly where Abvius sits. An NGO that has deployed SAGA across its missions has no reason to rip everything out: it has every reason to connect its field data to a steering, compliance and consolidation layer.

3. The five Abvius differentiators

An eligibility rules engine, not just a ledger

This is the core Abvius value proposition: reducing ineligible expenditure, meaning the amounts a donor refuses to reimburse at verification time.

The difference lies in when the error is caught. Accounting software records an entry, then produces a report, and ineligibility surfaces at audit, when it is too late. Abvius embeds donor rules directly into the data entry workflow: ceilings, authorised budget lines, eligibility periods, mandatory supporting documents, co-financing. The alert fires before the commitment, not eighteen months later.

Across an AFD, ECHO or European Union portfolio, one percentage point of rejected expenditure represents money that is never recovered.

Multi-framework accounting: one entry, several outputs

An international NGO rarely keeps a single set of books. It must produce a FEC file compliant with the French general chart of accounts, statements compliant with SYCEBNL/OHADA for its West African entities, a set of statements compliant with local standards in every other country where it is registered — Canada, Sweden, Costa Rica and so on — and report formats specific to each donor.

The usual answer is re-keying, or reworking in a spreadsheet. Abvius is multi-framework by design: an entry is recorded once and rendered simultaneously in every framework. Reconciling the statutory chart of accounts with the donor budget is no longer a year-end exercise, it is structural.

Multi-analytical allocation across donors

A single cost — a logistician''s salary, the rent of a field base — is very often shared between several funding sources. Abvius handles multi-donor analytical allocation, dual nomenclature (statutory chart of accounts plus donor budget structure) and co-financing logic, with significant flexibility: reallocation remains possible at the end of a period, once the real allocation key is finally known.

Two further automations carry real weight at audit: currency conversion using official InforEuro rates, filed automatically with the audit trail, and automatic supplier sanctions screening, with proof of the check archived in the audit file.

Payroll integrated with analytical accounting, in a modular architecture

Abvius produces payslips. What matters is where payroll sits: inside the same system as accounting, analytical allocation and donor rules.

In practice, time recorded in the timesheet feeds the allocation, which feeds the accounting entry, which feeds the donor report — with no export, no re-keying, no version drift between two databases. And because Abvius is modular, with 41 modules available from MEAL to travel and per diem, an organisation activates what it needs and does not pay for what it will not use.

Offline working without a local database to maintain

Abvius works offline. In normal use the tool runs in a browser, with nothing to install. For contexts without connectivity, a dedicated application can be downloaded and takes over: teams record their operations offline, and data synchronises as soon as the connection returns, with automatic consolidation at coordination and head office level.

The difference is therefore not whether an offline mode exists — both vendors offer one — but how far it extends. At Epiconcept, local installation on Windows is the only mode of operation: every workstation, on every mission, carries its own database to deploy, update and consolidate. At Abvius, the download only concerns workstations genuinely exposed to connectivity loss; everywhere else — head office, coordination, connected partners — access is through the browser. Data remains hosted in France on HDS-certified servers, encrypted at rest and in transit.

4. Comparison table

5. Three realistic scenarios

You use SAGA and Homère, and you are happy with them

Keep them. Plug Abvius in as a consolidation and compliance layer at head office: eligibility rules, multi-framework accounting, donor dashboard. You keep the field tool your teams know, and you add what is missing upstream of the audit.

You are equipping local partners

This is the most common case. National partners cannot always absorb a local database to install and maintain on every workstation. Abvius equips them through simple browser access, reserving the download for genuinely poorly connected sites — and strengthens their management capacity, which most donors explicitly value in CSO support schemes and in the aid localisation agenda.

You are starting from a blank page

Ask the total cost question: how many workstations to install, how many updates to propagate, how many databases to consolidate by hand. Then ask the second question, the one that can be quantified: how much expenditure was rejected in your last three audits.

6. Frequently asked questions

Is Abvius an alternative to Epiconcept NGO?

It depends on the need. For field accounting and payroll, the two overlap. For preventing ineligible expenditure, multi-framework accounting and equipping local partners, Abvius addresses a scope Epiconcept does not claim.

Does Abvius work offline?

Yes. The tool runs in a browser in normal use; on workstations exposed to connectivity loss, a dedicated application allows offline data entry, with automatic synchronisation when the connection returns.

Can Abvius be connected to SAGA or Homère?

Yes. Abvius exposes an API and Epiconcept documents SAGA interfacing with head office ERP systems. Technically, the connection is provided for on both sides.

Does Abvius produce payslips?

Yes, through a module integrated with analytical accounting, which allows staff costs to be charged directly to the right funding sources with no intermediate export.

How long does an Abvius deployment take?

Two to four weeks after the contract is signed.

7. In summary

Both solutions cover an NGO''s accounting and payroll. Abvius adds what can be quantified at the end of a project: a donor rules engine that blocks ineligible expenditure before it is committed, multi-framework accounting that avoids re-keying, multi-donor analytical allocation, and offline working limited to the workstations that need it, with no local database to maintain everywhere.

Information about Epiconcept NGO products comes from the vendor''s public website, consulted in August 2026. Epiconcept, SAGA, Homère and SAGA Stock are trademarks of their respective owners.

Want to know what your ineligible expenditure actually costs you? Request a demonstration: thirty minutes is enough to measure it against your own figures.