Reading University Students’ Union

Company Snapshot

Sector
Charity

Number of iplicit users
Full users: Three Finance team members and 25 Managers accessing to authorise invoices and run reports

Previous System
QuickBooks

Go Live
August 2022

Website
www.rusu.co.uk

Student Unions

Discover how quickly it is to move from QuickBooks to iplicit

Reading Students’ Union is making better business decisions thanks to iplicit.

A students’ union is a complex organisation. Reading Students’ Union (Reading SU) is responsible for operating everything from bars to a nursery, and activities from running club nights to supporting and representing 19,000 members!

Jane Williams, the SU’s Head of Finance and Business Support, says “the switch to iplicit has saved a lot of time and put better data at users’ fingertips.

We're definitely making better business decisions because managers can easily access iplicit and look at the figures.”

“Because our staff are being asked to authorise invoices which are all in one place, they get more of a feel for how much they’re authorising, and they can go back and review it. They can get to the data quickly and make informed decisions.”

Day-to-day demands

“At Reading SU we have a commercial side and a charitable side,” says Jane. “We use the departments for each area of our business. In the commercial side we have a department for Bars, Catering, Merchandise, Franchises. The Summer Ball is a separate department because it is our biggest event.

On the charitable side we have Advice, Student Voice and Student Opportunities. Finally we have Support, Governance and Digital and Comms which support all the business.

On top of that, we manage the finances for 150 clubs and societies – and the number keeps growing. On iplicit we have set up each one as a fund within a separate Restricted Department The clubs and societies are able to access the reports to see the balances on their funds”

Most student unions have to account for partial VAT and on iplicit this is straightforward – as it can be! - and the VAT return is easy to run, reconcile and submit.

Why change to iplicit?

The SU was using the desktop version of QuickBooks when Jane first arrived in November 2021. As this version was not going to be supported after January 2023 a decision had to be made about what to use in the future. Jane had used a number of accounting packages in her career and wanted a package that was easy to use, produced good reports with easy access to managers and was a good price.

“iplicit could do most of what we wanted – and the more expensive options weren’t going to give us anything more!

Because we were with QuickBooks desktop, I’d had to make a decision at quite a speed. The process of moving to iplicit was so good, so thorough and so clear.”

'We’ve saved loads of time with iplicit’

Getting accurate data from across the whole range of the union’s activities has become easier with iplicit and gives the union much more financial visibility.

“I can do a mini profit and loss account for a society – so the Archaeology Society can see what their income and their expenditure is and the balance on their fund. And the total equates to what’s in my balance sheet accounts,” says Jane.

“The bank reconciliation works really well too. Every day, we get the income via the card machines for our bars and catering and iplicit has set up templates so the system picks them up and it’s bank-rec’d at the same time.

Switching systems

Having switched finance platforms at Reading SU and other organisations, Jane’s advice is to get the implementation process right.

“I’ve changed accounts packages a number of times in my career and you’ve got to get the implementation right,” she says.

“I don’t mind if we need to spend a little more on implementation; it’s the running costs we need to be focusing on. We’ve got to set it up right at the beginning or we’ll regret it – and in fact both the implementation and support desk at iplicit were brilliant. They were very quick, very supportive. I can’t fault them.

“I’ve changed accounts packages a number of times in my career and you’ve got to get the implementation right”

Download Reading Students’ Union case study