ellenor

The challenge

‍

Move on from error-prone system that made reporting ‘extremely difficult’

‍

When Besa Lane joined as Head of Finance at ellenor, she found an accounting system that couldn’t provide her with the reporting she needed. “They were using a very old version of Sage 50,” she says. “I’d been using advanced systems and I found reporting and analysis with Sage extremely difficult.”

‍

The finance team has three entities to account for – a lottery trading company, a retail trading company and the hospice itself. This meant using multiple spreadsheets with macros that kept crashing. “The spreadsheets were prone to so many mistakes, with formula after formula, all linked to each other so if something was wrong it would affect a spreadsheet in another workbook,” says Besa.

‍

It took around three days to prepare management accounts for discussion with the senior leadership team. While the Sage 50 system lacked many modern capabilities, it was the dependence on spreadsheets and the pain involved in producing reports that became the main driver for change.

‍

‍

The solution

‍

Accounts are ready instantaneously with high degree of accuracy

‍

Having worked with finance software for big businesses, Besa considered a move to NetSuite. However, she discovered iplicit could provide the functionality ellenor needed without the cost of an enterprise-level system. The team was given access to a sandbox as the charity prepared for go-live with the new software.

‍

Once the system was live, there was an immediate impact on daily work. Staff now upload their own expenses to the system, with an approval workflow in place so a manager can review claims before finance processes them. Bank reconciliation is another regular task that’s been made quicker.

‍

The change of systems has substantially shortened the time spent on producing accounts and improved their accuracy. "The accounts are ready instantaneously. Once the month end is closed, we just need to check them,” says Besa. "It has shortened that period of reporting but also, more importantly, it’s improved accuracy. To me, that was the most important thing because the spreadsheets were prone to so many mistakes."

‍

With the data complete and accurate, the team can see and analyse the finances as necessary. “The main differences have been in reporting,” says Besa. “We can run management accounts right out of the system and we can filter them by departments, cost centres and account codes.”  

‍

The improvements in reporting have also made it easier to report to funders, who need to see clearly how their money has been spent. And it’s easier to scrutinise any element of the finances, since every transaction has a clear audit trail. "One of the best things about iplicit is that you can drill down into the figures, whereas you didn't have that function in Sage,” says Besa. “So you can see the invoice, for example, from a particular supplier, or when it comes to expenses you can see who's approved an expense and see the email authorisation.”

‍

‍

The outcome

‍

Finance team can focus on strategic insights thanks to better data

‍

Besa is happy with the support ellenor has received from its dedicated customer success executive at iplicit, as well as with the technical support the charity had at its first year-end rollover with iplicit. She is now looking at integrating iplicit with other software.

‍

The improved management information, combined with insights from patient information and donor systems, is already giving the charity’s leadership a new level of insight. “We can find the root cause of an overspend and make suggestions about how to mitigate that. We can look at one stream of income that’s falling short and see what we might do differently, or we can see one that’s doing very well and ask why,” says Besa.

‍

The new system has changed Besa’s role, enabling her to focus on higher-value work. “Before, I was spending a lot of time in spreadsheets, trying to get things right and eliminate mistakes. But now we have more valuable reporting that helps strategic decision making, so I’m spending more time on risk management and strategic analysis,” she says.

‍

“If we put all this information together, we can make very well-informed decisions about where to focus for the next two or three years. In an organisation like ours, people look for value for money, and I can say we’ve contributed to that.”