Abbey Group

The challenge

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Move on from a system that made a nightmare of intercompany accounting

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The pain of handling intercompany transactions with Sage 50 software drove the Abbey Group to seek a new finance system. “It was very clunky to do intercompany recharges,” says Danielle Disley, Group Finance Manager. “Making sure you raised an intercompany invoice, and that it was all reconciled correctly, was a nightmare – especially when you might get a bill to split between seven companies.”

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The finance team found itself constantly switching between different instances of the same software. “Logging in and out of different companies was time consuming – and you could easily find yourself in the wrong company,” says Danielle. “That was really the biggest factor driving us to iplicit.”

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All this meant a substantial delay in getting usable management information for the group. Finance Director Myke O’Brien led the search for new software, attending finance events and doing online research before choosing iplicit as the best tool for intercompany accounting.

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The solution

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Big time savings and simplified group accounting

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The team found the transition to iplicit straightforward. “The onboarding was very thorough and organised – and the training was good,” says Danielle.  The first big benefit from the move was that it massively simplified group accounting. “You put a rental invoice for the group in the system, for example, and it does everything else for you, including carrying out the recharge straight away,” says Danielle. “That saves massive amounts of admin time for my team – and because it’s done at the point it’s input, you know it’s in all the companies’ accounts.”

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With all the entities consolidated in a single system, the team has better visibility over the financial situation. “Being able to look at the P&Ls at the click of a button, without having to log in and out of different companies, saves a lot of time,” Danielle adds. “I’m able to look at the intercompany position at any point, without having to run reports. It’s visible to everyone who needs to see it.”

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The team uses iplicit’s AP automation features to match incoming invoices with supplier records. It has seen progressively better results as it has enriched those supplier records to make matching more accurate.  Further time savings came from GL reconciliation and using the iplicit mobile app for expenses.

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The outcome

iplicit has given leaders real-time data for decisions

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iplicit’s Excel plug-in allows Danielle and her team to pull live data from iplicit into spreadsheets, where the reports are created. “I love the fact that you can export pretty much anything from iplicit to Excel,” says Danielle. “That’s an excellent feature. For pretty much every report, I export the data to Excel and work within that.”

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This has given leaders the ability to see the full intercompany financial position in real time, fundamentally changing the role of finance in the business. “Before iplicit, there was a big time lag before you could see any accurate position for any of our companies,” says Danielle. “iplicit has really improved things and allowed the team to work better together. And at the management level, people can look at all the companies together and make their plans with better data.”

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She adds: “We’re in the flow of the new system now. We’re glad we made the change.”

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