Bradford Academy

The challenge

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An outdated system couldn’t handle the academy’s complexity

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The team at Bradford Academy was perpetually frustrated and held back by the finance system. “It was laggy, it kept letting us down and there were features that we thought, should be basic in an accounting package, but weren’t there or would be available at additional cost. It just wasn’t doing what we needed it to do”, says Finance Assistant Liz Idahmed.
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User accounts were limited in number – and processes for adding or removing users were difficult, so the team resorted to allocating accounts to departments rather than individuals. Staff frequently lost their work when interrupted because the system didn’t save drafts.
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The team had to laboriously record and calculate prepayments in spreadsheets.   Many processes were still paper-based, resulting in data entry work and a lengthy audit. And support was lacking, so users turned to Google searches and forums for help.

The solution

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The team has saved days every month on its core work

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The finance team learned of iplicit from a former colleague who had seen the software demonstrated at the education technology show BETT. “He knew we were all constantly complaining about the system falling down on us and not providing what we needed so he said we should take a look at iplicit,” says Liz.

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The team invited iplicit to demonstrate the system. “I had plenty of questions about functionality, and the answer from iplicit was always ‘Yes, that’s readily available’.  We took the system to tender and had numerous demonstrations from other providers. However, iplicit met our needs better. We decided to change to iplicit and I’m happy that we did. Life is a lot easier.”

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During implementation, the team tested and trained on the system with real data in iplicit’s sandbox environment.  Since going live, the department of just three people has drastically cut the time spent on core work with the aid of automation.

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• AP automation: The team has saved “substantial” amounts of time by no longer manually handling incoming invoices. iplicit’s optional extra and chargeable AP automation feature reads invoices, matches them with supplier records and populates the necessary fields, ready for review.

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• Easy prepayments: The team no longer must maintain complex, spreadsheet-based prepayment journals for services such as insurance and subscriptions. Instead, iplicit provides users with the option to prepay when the invoice is initially entered.

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• Easy repeat invoicing: iplicit’s copy function makes quick work of issuing repeat invoices for use of its sports centre or for participation in joint projects. “What used to be a full morning’s work, sometimes drifting into the afternoon, has become just one of the morning’s tasks, It’s fantastic” says Liz.

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• Fast bank reconciliation: Reconciling the bank account used to take 3-4 hours a week but now takes 50-60 minutes with the aid of automation.

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• Clear audit trails: The team can see date stamps and user IDs for every order and approval, along with clear documentation for each transaction.

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• Easy search: Users can find the records they need by name, supplier and department and can check on the progress of anything that needs authorisation.

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• Less paperwork: Paperwork has been cut drastically and the stack of 10 archive boxes that were previously needed for audit has been reduced to one.

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The team has enjoyed good support when queries have cropped up. “The support team get back to us rapidly and when we’ve needed a bit more help, we’ve arranged calls where I could show someone my screen in real time while I talk to them,” says Liz.

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The outcome

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The team has more time for strategic work

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Around half the academy’s staff – about 150 people – now use iplicit in some way and the organisation is enjoying the benefits the system brings.

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“At any one time in this office, you’ll have a queue at the door, your phone will be ringing, numerous unread emails containing queries – it can pile up and get the best of everybody,” says Liz. “But now iplicit has assisted us simplifying essential workload and queries, we can do a bit of every task every day and get through the workload.”

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She adds: “It’s made us more available as a department and given us scope to look at other projects. If we wanted to look at a new strategic initiative, or if we needed to respond to new DfE requirements, we could give those things the time they need – whereas in the past, we’d have needed more staff or extra hours in the day.”

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