Charity finance professionals to glimpse the future at CFG Conference

iplicit and the leading accountancy firm Moore Kingston Smith are joining forces at the Charity Finance Group’s sold-out conference in London on Thursday, 27 June.  

Anjali Kothari, Partner and Head of Education and Nonprofit at Moore Kingston Smith, will join iplicit Director Paul Sparkes for a session called What Will the Charity Finance Function of the Future Look Like? 

They will examine the common challenges facing charity finance teams and how automation is already improving efficiency and accuracy, freeing up resources to concentrate on higher-value work.  

The presentation will include a video case study with Dorset-based Lewis-Manning Hospice Care, which has already saved days of work every month through the digital transformation of its finance function. 

The session will examine common challenges such as: 

• the need to handle expenses claims from staff and volunteers;
• the complexity of partial VAT;
• the need to consolidate accounts for more than one entity;
• manual workflow authorisation;
• integration between the finance software and other systems;
• the difficulty of reporting to different stakeholders and analysing the financial data. 

Attendees will be offered a checklist to help them decide whether their own software needs changing – and will leave armed with a guide to choosing a new system. 

Paul Sparkes said: “Many charities present a first-class digital experience to donors and supporters but are held back behind the scenes by outdated systems and laborious manual processes.  

“Often, the finance teams are tied to clunky on-premises software which doesn’t integrate properly with other systems they use. As a result, they spend many hours manipulating data in spreadsheets to produce any usable reports and analysis. 

“Our session at the Charity Finance Group Conference won’t just catalogue the challenges. It will be focused on the future and how charity finance professionals can embrace digital transformation. They can save large amounts of time on routine and repetitive tasks while equipping themselves with accurate, real-time data to drive the best-informed decisions in an uncertain future.  

“I’m excited to be joined by Anjali Kothari, Partner at Moore Kingston Smith, a leading accountancy practice with more than 750 charities among its clients. 

“Anjali and I both have extensive experience of the headaches faced by nonprofits’ finance teams and how better software can transform and future-proof their organisations.   

“We’ll also present a video featuring Lewis-Manning Hospice Care. It’s a case study in the benefits of digital transformation. Not only did Lewis-Manning save days every month by eliminating data entry and manipulation of figures in spreadsheets; it also produced reliable, timely data that could be sliced and diced in as many ways as the team required for reports and analysis. The team there feels future-proofed and ready to handle expansion.”  

iplicit launched into the market in 2019 and has enabled a long list of charities to leave behind on-premises software and embrace powerful cloud accounting. 

Its charity clients include Health Poverty Action, Terence Higgins Trust, Age Scotland, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Edinburgh International Festival, Al-Khair Foundation, Community Foundation Ireland and Black Country Living Museum. 

Find out more about iplicit 

Find out more about how iplicit helps charities and nonprofits, download a free toolkit for charities changing systems or get in touch to see iplicit’s software for yourself.