Bransby Horses

The challenge

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Save time, reduce stress and produce better reporting

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When Bransby Horses became frustrated by the limitations of its dated Exchequer software, it changed systems. But not to iplicit.  “We moved to Access Financials for a while – and that didn’t work out very well,” says Sarah Peacock, Finance Manager.

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After two years using Access Financials, the charity still didn’t have financial reports that managers could see for themselves. Fixed asset depreciation was worked out in spreadsheets, with the risk that a miscopied formula could throw out the calculations. Restricted funds and donations were also tracked in Excel.

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"The team was always stressed, working to deadlines and rushing things. It was known at one stage that in the first two weeks after month-end, you didn’t go near the finance department. You left them alone.”

Sarah Peacock, Finance Manager, Bransby Horses

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Month-end tasks such as bank reconciliation involved prolonged manual work. “Some of our control accounts would take weeks to reconcile,” says Sarah. "The team was always stressed, working to deadlines and rushing things. It was known at one stage that in the first two weeks after month-end, you didn’t go near the finance department. You left them alone.”

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The charity reluctantly decided it was time to change again. “It was painful but we just were not getting the functionality we wanted,” says Sarah.

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The solution

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Team has saved a week every month and produced better data

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Bransby Horses’ four finance staff handle the accounts of the main charity as well as the trading company which runs the cafe and gift shop and another entity that sells gifts by mail order. Most of the charity’s funding is unrestricted but some restricted funds also have to be tracked and reported on.

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iplicit had impressed the team during the charity’s earlier research into new systems. It offered the extra functionality that was wanted, including the ability for managers to see finance data.

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"It wasn't an easy choice to make to go through the whole software implementation again,” says Sarah. “But getting iplicit up and running was very simple and people picked it up after just a few training sessions”.

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The new system removed a lot of manual work. The previously time-consuming jobs of bank and general ledger reconciliation have been automated. Accounts payable processes are also quicker thanks to automation, with incoming invoices routed to the AP system and matched to purchase orders.

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"It wasn't an easy choice to make to go through the whole software implementation again,” says Sarah. “But getting iplicit up and running was very simple and people picked it up after just a few training sessions”.

Sarah Peacock, Finance Manager

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Fixed asset depreciation is no longer done in spreadsheets. “Now, you enter a capital purchase and iplicit will flag that it needs capitalising. You capitalise it and it’s done,” says Sarah. The charity also uses iplicit as a database of assets, storing items’ locations, pictures and details. “If someone has an old tractor that needs to be repaired or replaced, they can look on the register and find its current value, when we bought it and where we got it from,” Sarah adds.

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The spreadsheets that tracked restricted funds have been scrapped. Now, all income is tagged in the finance system as restricted or unrestricted, allowing the team to easily run reports on how money has been used.  Approval workflows are contained in the system – and when approval limits were increased recently, it took Sarah just half an hour to amend the processes herself.

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All these improvements have helped save about a week every month across the finance team. “Closing off the purchase ledger takes seconds. Reconciling all the bank accounts and control accounts is done by the third or fourth of the month because the team keep on top of it during the month,” says Sarah.

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Managers outside finance can see dashboards comparing their spending with budgets and drill down to see details. The finance team’s own period-end reporting spreadsheets now pull live data from iplicit.

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The team has felt well supported by iplicit. “Everyone’s been very helpful and useful and if I have any issues at all, I drop a note to our customer success manager, who gets back to me straight away,” says Sarah.

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“We really like iplicit’s new AI assistant as well. It means we don’t always have to go to support because we can sometimes figure it out for ourselves. I had both finance assistants off work recently and had to do the payment run with my finance officer. The AI help was brilliant and we did the payment run with the AI as a guide.”

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The outcome

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Finance team is less stressed while managers own their budgets

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The move to iplicit has had a profound impact on the finance team. "They're less stressed and I'm definitely seeing fewer mistakes,” says Sarah. “When I’m looking at the month-end reports, I feel confident that they're correct and up to date." When a finance assistant asked to go part-time, Sarah could approve the request without having to recruit to fill the hours.

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“We feel like we’re a proper, functioning team rather than always thinking ‘Here comes another deadline’."

Sarah Peacock, Finance Manager

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“We feel like we’re a proper, functioning team rather than always thinking ‘Here comes another deadline’,” Sarah says. “The team now has the time now to work with the wider charity. For example they've sat with marketing and worked out how can we get things to work better between the departments and they’ve got involved with stocktakes at the shop.”

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The benefits have been felt beyond the finance team. Managers “own” their budgets now that they’re able to see and analyse what they’re spending. “People are coming to us with their queries and we’re seeing fewer mistakes and problems because of that,” says Sarah. “We're working with people more – rather than just doing processing.”

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