Accounting for charities and not-for-profits

AccountsIQ is helping WCVA with everything from trustee reports to SORP reporting.

“The more we use AccountsIQ, the more we realise how much it can do.” 

WCVA is the national membership body for voluntary organisations in Wales. It manages funding, training and a range of support services that help charities and non-profits ‘make a bigger difference together’. In the months before the UK’s first lockdown, WCVA’s Finance Director, Tracey Marsh, recognised that they needed better financial reporting and started looking at new finance systems.

Tracey Marsh, Finance Director, WCVA

“We weren’t happy with the reporting capabilities in our existing system, Exchequer,” says Tracey. “Every time we wanted a report that wasn’t standard, such as comparing actuals to budget with variances, we had to pay extra. That was on top of an already high annual fee.”

Lockdown accelerated the need for change

When lockdown happened, this sense of dissatisfaction turned into more urgent and serious issues. As with many other organisations, the transition to home working accelerated the need for digital transformation.

“Our old system was server-based rather than Cloud-based,” explains Tracey.

“It was clunky; dropping all the time. And it just got worse and worse.  In that first lockdown, most of the pain from a finance point of view was because of the system. It meant we were working twice as many hours to do the same amount of work as when we were in the office. We simply couldn’t continue like that.”

AccountsIQ came in at a good price

The WCVA team first heard about AccountsIQ from their Scottish counterparts, the SCVO (Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations). They were already using AccountsIQ and were happy to vouch for the system’s benefits. Nonetheless, WCVA still did their due diligence and conducted a thorough analysis of AccountsIQ against Sage, Iplicit and Exchequer.

“We chose AccountsIQ partly because of cost,” admits Tracey. “It came in at a reasonable price and we liked that there’s flexibility in the pricing. With so much uncertainty, we didn’t want to commit to a fixed cost that wasn’t linked to the number of users.”

Finance processes are now automated and seamless  

WCVA were also keen to move away from old, manual ways of working to more automated, seamless processes.

“This is something I love about AccountsIQ,” says Tracey. “Everything is self- contained within the system; even our bank reconciliations are now automated. You’re also able to attach documents to transactions; our auditors think this is wonderful.”

Budget holders have more autonomy

One of Tracey’s key objectives was for budget holders to have access to certain parts of the system, so they’d be more self-sufficient. WCVA has around 40 system users. Five are finance team members and the others are set up as light users which enables the wider business to manage approvals and access reports. 

The next step will be to start using AccountsIQ’s automated consolidation features. WCVA has two subsidiaries. One has already moved onto AccountsIQ from Xero and the other will follow in due course.

Multi-dimensional reporting is so much easier

Like many non-profits, WCVA uses AccountsIQ’s BI codes and multi-dimensional reporting to manage their complex accounting and reporting needs.

“One of our dimensions is used to distinguish between restricted and unrestricted funds,” explains Tracey. “Then we have lots of projects to which we allocate salaries and other costs; that’s another list of dimensions.

We’ve also created other dimensions so we can deliver detailed reports to our trustees that show exactly what each project is contributing to the organisation. Once we've closed the accounts, I can just run this multiple KPI report for the trustees. I used to have to do that manually and now AccountsIQ pretty much does it all for me, it’s brilliant.”

AccountsIQ also helps with SORP reporting

WCVA’s finance team created their Chart of Accounts in AccountsIQ to align with their SORP reporting.

“Now, we just run the GL explorer and there's the statutory accounts. Of course, we still have to do the notes ourselves, but the balance sheet is all there. It’s phenomenal!”

AccountsIQ is so easy to use, WCVA are using it more and more

When asked to sum up the single best thing about AccountsIQ, Tracey responds:

“As soon as we had the demo with Ellen at AccountsIQ, I could see it was a user-friendly system with a logical, intuitive layout. It was just lovely to look at.

Also, Ellen was so knowledgeable and helpful, I knew we’d work well together. In fact, we’ve found that the more we use AccountsIQ, the more we learn and realise just how much more it can do for us.”

Learn More

AccountsIQ solves the often complex accounting, productivity and reporting challenges of over 100 charities such as the Archdiocese of Dublin and Lepra. View our customer testimonials.

Find out more about our charity accounting software.

AccountsIQ helps global charity, Lepra gain rapid multi-dimensional reporting and reduce processing time by 80% by moving to the Cloud.

Lepra are a charity leading the global fight for the eradication of Leprosy. Each day over 600 people worldwide are either diagnosed with Leprosy or are starting treatment for Leprosy. More than 8% of these are children.

Based in the UK but supporting operations on a global level, like many charities, Lepra have complex revenue generation. Their revenue comes from various sources and must be consolidated into one system for accounting and compliance purposes. Recognising the need for a cloud solution which can automate their manual processes and consolidate their revenue, the Lepra team engaged ION, a financial transformation specialist, to help find the right solution for them. The support ION offer enables a point of contact for the finance team should any issues arise – whether they are knowledge or training issues, or problems in simple transacting to complex reporting.

Requirements and Challenges

Lepra’s current accounting system was not giving them the reporting breakdown that they needed, meaning it was taking too long to pull together information which advised critical business decisions. In addition, the need to manage all their revenue in one place and have access to real-time data would not only save time but also give everyone in the team more access to information.

Like many businesses, Lepra’s current system was not well connected to their CRM system, Advantage, and this meant a lot of manual processing was needed to align the two systems. As with a lot of manual processes, this was time consuming, allowed for human error and often meant the process wasn’t followed exactly as required. Through the discovery phase, their implementation partner, ION, identified a lot of functionality and improvements that Lepra wanted to implement in the future, therefore the need to have a system which could be flexible and grow with the charity was important.

The final major requirement for the team was that the implementation could be quick and seamless. With a lot of disruption to the business already and with many team members working from home, they needed a solution which could be quick and easy to get everyone on board with.

Quick-to-Implement Solution

Taking all these things into consideration, AccountsIQ was identified as a good solution for Lepra. A flexible and user-friendly cloud accounting solution, AccountsIQ could address all of their requirements and open up many other benefits.

Nick Avery, Director of Resources, Lepra

“AccountsIQ was the only solution we found that combined the ease of use of cloud based accounting systems and the multi-dimensional analysis that is needed for charity accounting at a cost that we liked!” Nick Avery, Director of Resources, Lepra.

A concern for the team was the time it takes to switch over to a new system and how this would disrupt their processes. However with ION’s quick start implementation framework and our user-friendly interface, the transition was managed with ease. The implementation was completed in a matter of weeks, and the transfer of data to AccountsIQ was seamless.

Outcomes

Like many clients, within weeks, Lepra were finding many benefits to operating within a new system. The ease of use of AccountsIQ has made the adoption across the Lepra team much easier, meaning they can see the benefits of the system straight away. Several key areas have been improved:

• Process efficiency: manual processes have been drastically reduced, with some processes now 80% quicker than before.
• CRM data connectivity: the import of data from Lepra’s CRM system, Advantage has been simplified. Removing the need for additional Excel sheets and manual intervention to import and export data sets several times is helping to save the team a lot of time and undoubtedly removing opportunities for error.
• Remote access and usability: the usability of the AccountsIQ system has been praised by the Lepra team and means that the business has more active users getting the most of the system. With many teams still working remotely, having user-friendly cloud systems has minimised training requirements and empowered decision-making across the team.
• Expenses management: switching from paper methods to a digital system, expenses are submitted to the relevant manager directly, with the employee given full traceability to monitor the status of their expense claim.
• Scalability: the integration paves the way for scalability of the system in the future. Built on a solid cloud accounting system, the team can plan for additional modules and reporting functionality when the business requirements dictate.
• Maintenance: often with new software integrations, IT teams are typically concerned about the impact that a project implementation will have on their workload, but with the right system, maintenance for internal teams should be reduced. For Lepra, they have found that the system is much easier to maintain than their previous software.

Hampshire Cultural Trust Implements AccountsIQ Across Both Trust and Trading 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.

Phase I:  Reporting Across the Trust

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.”

Phase II:  Integration and Automation

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.”