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Overcome the NFP sector’s unique challenges and streamline the way your accounting team, fundraisers and volunteers work. AccountsIQ allows you to achieve transparency, consistency and SORP compliance with slick, digital processes and low cost of ownership.
Gain full transparency with detailed expenses tracking, linked to funds and easily segregate income streams. Work with our platform experts to create your unique, multi-dimensional coding framework and set up the exact reporting you need.
Swap costly upgrades, expensive hardware and heavy implementation costs for one single affordable monthly subscription. Built in the cloud, AccountsIQ integrates seamlessly with other apps, allowing you to streamline processes, reduce errors and save time.
Transform the way you work with AccountsIQ’s automated processes. Spend more time on strategic work and less on repetitive administrative tasks. Go digital with approvals, expenses, bank feeds, reconciliation, document storage, FX, consolidation and more.
This multi-dimensional reporting is perfect for our setting. It has revolutionised our potential to do our job here in the centre. That is to stand over these charitable funds and know exactly what’s going on with the funds of each charity.
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What advice would an historic City of London Livery Company give to finance teams looking to implement new accounting software? The best: it’s all about planning ahead and design thinking.
When Dan Garrigan, Finance Director with Merchant Taylors’ Company, decided it was time to upgrade from Sage 200, he knew their new finance system had to be in the Cloud.
"Sage 200 was coming to its end-of-life and the reporting was clunky. If we were going to change finance system we definitely wanted it to be Cloud-based, rather than incurring server costs."
Dan undertook a broad search of the accounting software marketplace. He looked at both large ERP systems, such as NetSuite and Sage Intacct, and smaller out-of-the-box software, such as Xero.
"We fell between two stalls. Our finance needs are more complex than the functionality we found in the out-of-the-box systems, like Xero. But it was hard to justify the cost of something like Netsuite."
After joining a couple of AccountsIQ’s webinars and demos, Dan thought: ‘that ticks all the boxes’.
Dan and his team found switching to AccountsIQ painless. Here’s his advice if you’re thinking of embarking on a similar project:
Dan’s team thought ahead about the design of their Chart of Accounts. They then refined this with the AccountsIQ team who shared their experience of what had worked with other customers. As Dan says:
“The design of your Chart of Accounts is the big thing to get right. Everything else then follows. The time spent on this really paid off for us. We’ve got a design we’re happy with and meets all our needs.”
Watch our ‘How healthy is your Chart of Accounts?’ webinar.
The ideas you have at the start of your project might not carry through to implementation. That’s not a problem. As Dan explains:
With AccountsIQ, you get Sandbox test entities. This is great because you can play around with the software before you go-live and see what things look like and how it all works.
Dan strongly recommends training your team, both in the run up to implementation and in the first two months post go-live. As he says:
"AccountsIQ are extremely good at this. We used the AIQ Academy and we had bespoke online training sessions with Daryl. They were all invaluable. We’ve kept the recordings and the team refer back when they need a refresher on features they don’t use regularly."
AccountsIQ’s charity accounting software is trusted by over 100 charity and not-for-profit finance teams. You can read their stories here.
To find out more talk to one of our accounting experts.
AccountsIQ met Hampshire Cultural Trust's complex not-for-profit accounting needs with 23 locations and consolidation of 2 entities.
Hampshire Cultural Trust (HCT) was formed when two Councils decentralised Hampshire’s museums and cultural centres. Previously posting its financial transactions to the Councils’ centralised SAP system, the newly-formed Trust needed to find an affordable solution which could handle its complex accounting needs across 23 locations, consolidate two legal entities and produce sector-compliant and meaningful reports from Head Office. With the help of advisors BDO, the Trust chose Cloud accounting and consolidation software AccountsIQ to handle accounting across the estate which comprises 23 museums and art centres.
HCT’s Director of Finance and Resources, Charlie Inigo-Jones, joined the Trust in 2016. Charlie says, “In 2015 the Trust needed to set up its own accounting system very quickly. Under my predecessor, we simply took AccountsIQ out of the box, imported the general ledger and cost centres from the Council’s system, and started to process its own transactions. That was it! We have since set up monthly accounts reconciliation and reporting processes, and are now beginning to explore the software’s full potential using multi-dimensional coding to meet our reporting needs.”
Working with AccountsIQ’s charity implementation team, Hampshire Cultural Trust’s project consists of two phases: designing and implementing the system infrastructure and reporting across their 23 locations and at Head Office; and completing a number of integration projects with ticketing, EPOS, payroll and other systems which will bring consistency and efficiencies across the group.
As well as 23 locations, the Trust has two separate legal entities, and a number of restricted or programme-based funds which need to be separately accounted for and reported. Each transaction needs to be posted to the correct location, entity, and fund.
AccountsIQ has enormous potential to produce Management Information Reports. In order for us to create those automated reporting packs and make dashboards meaningful, we have been working with AccountsIQ’s very flexible coding structure to ensure it is optimised for our purposes. The ability to define user access and create custom reports will allow us to cascade reporting throughout the Trust in a relevant way. Charlie Inigo-Jones
AccountsIQ is particularly suited to supporting a charity’s need to account for restricted funds. Charlie says, “AccountsIQ solves the accounting for restricted funds problem by using a third dimension of coding. The use of project codes make the information easy to grab. We could actually set up more layers of coding to extract sub-project information if we needed to.”
Many locations across the estate sell entry or event tickets and some incorporate retail outlets and cafes. HCT has installed two systems on a trial basis which will provide automated ticketing and Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS).
Charlie says, “Introducing ticketing and EPOS systems will help us implement codes at the point of sale, so the system captures what it is we have sold, what for, and the other information we require in order to provide meaningful retail management reporting. Integration with AccountsIQ will fully automate the process of posting sales from both retail sales systems, and help us to transform our financial and stock control processes. It will be a massive win when data from each venue can be reconciled to the tills, the bank and amounts received from card payments – all on a daily basis and with clearly defined reporting.”
Sarah Kilmartin, COO with The Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, outlines the benefits – and challenges – of digital finance transformation. She also explains why she would never go back to the old ways of working with stand-alone, desktop systems and is happy to recommend AccountsIQ.
In 2018, The Diocese of Arundel and Brighton began a digital finance transformation initiative with AccountsIQ. It was a highly ambitious project involving complex workflow automations. There were also multiple stakeholders, including around 70, mainly volunteer, users with varying levels of accounting and IT experience.
The Diocese had been using a stand-alone finance system, called Finance Co-ordinator. “It had a good Chart of Accounts,” Sarah recalls. “But no consolidation function. At the end of the year, each parish would send in their activity and finance would re-key the transactions.”
These manual processes were time consuming and error prone. More importantly, the only management information the Diocese had was a P&L and balance sheet for each parish. “There was no granularity,” says Sarah, “the old system didn’t give us the insight we needed at individual parish level.”
In search of a more advanced cloud system, Sarah talked to AccountsIQ’s CEO, Tony Connolly, and the finance team from the Archdiocese of Dublin, who were already an AccountsIQ customer.
“AccountsIQ is Cloud-based, so I can access the parish books and see what’s going on from the centre.”
Sarah Kilmartin, COO, The Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton.
The Diocese of Arundel and Brighton chose AccountsIQ because they wanted to be able to share a single platform with their parishes. Their objective was to automate as much of their manual finance processing as possible.
Digital cash collection is an example of an effective process that AccountsIQ created specifically for the Diocese. Income from each church is entered on an online cash collection sheet, which updates directly into AccountsIQ. This means income is recognised directly on entry and can be consolidated across all parishes. Crucially, Sarah’s team didn’t simply replicate their previous, paper-based cash collection process into AccountsIQ.
“We combined a number of processes,” explains Sarah. “Now, it’s quick, easy, and error proof with no re-keying, sending emails or putting things in the post. I also look after a small parish as a volunteer and the monthly bank rec takes less than 15 minutes.
Sarah also likes the useability of AccountsIQ, “The most useful feature for me as COO is having all my parishes laid out in a list. I can click down to the transaction level detail very easily. I also have full trust in the completeness and accuracy of the data being captured; it accounts for every penny that goes through the bank.”
The Diocese is using AccountsIQ extensively for analysis and reporting. Each parish has its own database in AccountsIQ, and the BI coding structure enables the Diocese to run reports for each church, fund, site or central office department.
“This multi-dimensional reporting is perfect for our setting. It has revolutionised our potential to do our job here in the centre. That is to stand over these charitable funds and know exactly what’s going on with the funds of each charity.
“I find the management reports useful and look at them all the time. For example, when a new priest comes to a parish I can run through the P&L very easily. Previously, we didn’t have this level of information.”
After several years on the platform, AccountsIQ continues to work well for the Diocese. Sarah reports that they hit their year-end deadlines, with all parish accounts reconciled within two months. “Initially, we needed support to roll out the project,” she recalls. “But our users are now confident using the system.”
Looking back, Sarah describes this complex digital transformation project as a creative, on-going collaboration between the Diocese and the AccountsIQ team. “There are still things we plan to do,” she says. “For example, contactless payments have become mainstream since we started with AccountsIQ, and we need to find a solution that works for us. That said, whenever we bring problems to AccountsIQ, they understand them and help us sort them.”
“AccountsIQ is a product I would happily recommend to others. It has revolutionised how we do our job.”
Sarah Kilmartin, COO, The Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton
Summing-up, Sarah concludes that, now they have everyone working on one central Cloud accounting platform, they would never go back.
“We have fewer finance staff now, but they are more skilled. Our people costs may not have gone down, but the quality of what we know has gone up. We would certainly never go back to having 80+ desktop systems. Ultimately, AccountsIQ is a product I would happily recommend to others.”
Discover how AccountsIQ's accounting software for charities solves the often complex accounting challenges of over 100 not for profits such as Humentum.
Call us on +44 (0)203 598 7350 or email us to set up a free consultation/demo.
