Awen Cultural Trust

How Awen Cultural Trust is saving up to three days a month with iplicit

An organisation spearheading a host of big regeneration projects needs its finance department to be highly efficient. Awen Cultural Trust – whose work in South Wales has involved engaging with more than a million people so far – needed accounting software that would automate common tasks and speed-up month-end processes.

It chose iplicit and has seen manual work drastically reduced at the same time as reporting has improved.

About Awen Cultural Trust

The work of Awen Cultural Trust is spread across three local authority areas in South Wales. It runs Bryngarw House and Country Park as well as two services for adults with learning disabilities, two community centres and the libraries of Bridgend council.

It is responsible for the Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl, which is currently closed for a multi-million pound refurbishment under the Levelling Up Fund; Maestag Town Hall, which has recently re-opened after amulti-million pound refurbishment; Blaengarw Workmen’s Hall; the Met in Abertillery; and the Muni in Pontypridd, which reopened in time for the 2024 National Eisteddfod.

With so much going on, having to manually consolidate the accounts for the main trust and its trading entity was time consuming.

Keeping track of grants is a big thing

With so many projects happening simultaneously and an authorisation process that crosses departments, accounting at Awen can get complex. “Purchase order requisitions are the big thing. We have a lot of them coming through,” says Maria Goddard, Head of Finance.

“We have an authorisation matrix which involves doing things in a very particular way. Authorisation doesn’t just go up to the next manager – it depends what department you’re in and what GL code you’re posting it against. So whatever cost centre a marketing invoice goes to, it’s always the head of marketing that signs it off, and with utilities, whichever cost centre they go to, it’s always the operations team.  

“We have a lot of invoices coming through as well and then there are day-to-day queries, month-end processes and running different scenarios for our trading P&Ls to make sure they’re in the right place,” she adds. “We also have a lot of grants coming in, with a big Shared Prosperity Fund stream, and the constraints on that have become more and more stringent. Keeping track of that is a big thing. I’ve had somebody devoted to just that at month-end.”

In safe hands with the iplicit team

Implementing an accounting software system can be daunting, but the Awen Cultural Trust team was impressed by iplicit. “Helen was absolutely amazing,” Maria says of Helen Goldbourne, iplicit’s Implementation Training and Partner Onboarding Lead.

“She couldn’t do enough for us – so much so that we didn’t want to be transferred to anyone else. When you click with somebody that’s on your wavelength, it’s so much easier. I’m the only person in the team who had gone through something like this before, so I was on at my team all the time to test, test, test. But it was pretty seamless in the end.

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“Since going live, the experience with the support team has been really good. We have good response times and people will call and talk us through any issues on Teams. Everyone I’ve met from iplicit has just been lovely and very eager to help.”  Maria Goddard, Head of Finance

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Month-end close is two or three days quicker

iplicit quickly saved large amounts of time, ensuring important information was available to decision makers much quicker.  

“I would say the month-end close is about two or three days quicker with iplicit,” says Maria. "The work of seven or eight days has been shrunk into five. The other thing that’s been easier is the audit process. Because everything is saved in the system, we haven’t had nearly as many queries. The auditors can just go in and get the information for themselves and we can get on with our own work at the same time.”  

People say, I love the new system

“I think my favourite iplicit feature is the fact that it consolidates for us,” says Maria. “Previously, the work would all be manual, working out which codes are the ones that go between the companies. But now we’ve got a series of intercompany codes and iplicit does it all for us. Partial VAT is much easier in iplicit too, because we only have to do the calculation annually."

“The rest of the business has been happy as well. A few weeks after implementing iplicit, I had people coming up to me, saying, ‘I love the new system’.” Maria Goddard, Head of Finance

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