World Jewish Relief

The challenge

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Moving from old-fashioned systems to the cloud

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The Covid crisis pointed up what the team at World Jewish Relief had already realised: its finance system, Exchequer, was old and outdated, while many of its processes were paper-based and unwieldy.

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Before Covid, the team was in the office all the time. Many supplier invoices existed on paper and were physically signed off. When that system was replaced by emails and the DocuSign platform, the replacement created more complexity and inconsistency.  “Some invoices were signed on DocuSign, some were approved by email, and it was a complicated mix of processes. We really needed to find something better,” says Finance Manager Monika Kosinska.

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She adds: “More fundamentally, our previous system was old and clunky and we couldn’t always get the right reports from it. It was stored on our own server, and we had VPN software to connect remotely but that didn’t always work very quickly, so we realised we needed to move to cloud-based software.”

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The solution

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‍Processes are simpler and team benefits from better reports and analysis

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Moving to iplicit has brought a host of benefits for the finance team.

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• Simpler approvals: Budget holders are notified about the invoices they need to review and approve in iplicit. “There’s no bypassing this process,” says Monika. “We still encounter some issues, as our processes and workflows are becoming more complex, but these are being addressed over time with support from Iplicit.”

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• Simplified grant payments: The team now has a simpler system for paying grants to the charity’s partners around the world. The upcoming month’s grant payments are scheduled as budgeted and then paid once they have been through the authorisation workflow.

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• Faster transactions and bank reconciliations: “All our transactions and bank reconciliations can be processed much quicker,” says Monika. “Everything is done in a better-organised way.”

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• Visible audit trails: It’s no longer necessary to consult physical paper trails when reviewing transactions. Supporting documents are kept in the finance system, making for easier audit.  

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• Automated fixed asset depreciation: The charity has added its fixed asset register to iplicit and the system handles depreciation, removing lengthy manual calculations.

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• Prepayments: Prepaid expenditure is now recognised appropriately by iplicit, doing away with complex spreadsheets and processes.

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• Easier budgeting: When budget forecasts are revised, the team can download the budget, enter new figures and upload it into iplicit again.

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• Powerful analysis: iplicit’s multiple accounting dimensions and enquiries have transformed reporting and analysis. Reporting grant expenditure by country each year is easily done by using “country” as an attribute in the system. The same applies to analysing expenditure by individual campaign or appeal. “You can filter by any attribute you like,” says Monika. “And whereas previously, there would be one code for all expenditure on a particular event or campaign, now we can see different types of expenditure within that campaign.”

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The outcome

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‍More efficient work for the finance team and better information for the charity

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Although the system is still bedding in, World Jewish Relief is seeing the benefits of iplicit compound as time goes on. “As we gather more experience of iplicit, it continues to improve,” says Monika.  “We acknowledge that some teething problems are inevitable with any new system.” The team plans to introduce more staff to the system, empowering budget holders by letting them see reports and transactions for themselves.

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Monika adds: “iplicit has definitely had much of the impact we were hoping for on the organisation, making finance work easier and providing better management information.”