Charity Finance Group

The challenge

Modernise key systems and handle complexities of charity finance

Like many of the charities that make up its membership, Charity Finance Group (CFG) has a good deal of complexity to deal with. It has the transactional volumes that go with running an organisation with around 20 staff and £2m turnover. And it needs to calculate a lot of deferred income, with more than 1,450 member organisations and many paying their subscriptions in advance. Much of CFG’s activity is centred around two annual events – a conference and a charity dinner – which need to be budgeted for and reported on.

CFG introduced SAP Business One as a combined CRM and finance system in 2018. Four years later, it was time for a new programme of digital transformation. CFG decided to look again at the systems that would best meet its needs when it came to finance, CRM and website content management.

The solution

Intuitive system automates complex tasks such as deferred income

CFG needed a finance system that was intuitive and easy to learn. “We also needed something that was easy to get reports from,” says Kath Qualtrough, Interim Finance Director. “The challenge was to identify a system that was simple enough for all staff to use and could easily handle the complexities of charity finance.   

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“We have a lot of deferred income to deal with. There are payments in advance for events and also membership income that needs to be deferred over the months to which it applies, so iplicit was chosen partly because it could automate those calculations,” says Kath.

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It was decided to integrate iplicit with CFG’s chosen CRM system, while it also adopted CTI for content management. “That meant there was a lot of change to absorb at once,” says Kath. “I’ve found iplicit support really helpful. The people are responsive, clear and patient – and they always include screenshots to show us what to do.

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“The feedback I've had from staff is that they like the system. They use the system mainly for putting on expenses and for approving expenses or invoices and they’ve been particularly pleased with it. In the finance team, whenever we’ve had aproblem, the support team at iplicit has helped us resolve it or given us answers about what we can and can't do in the system.”

The outcome

Team is well supported and looking forward to new iplicit features

Following a period of rapid change, the team is keenly awaiting new features in iplicit. “We’re looking forward to the arrival of iplicit’s new reporting module, so people elsewhere in the organisation can easily see what’s going on, how many invoices are paid, what our creditors are owed, how we’re doing against forecasts and budgets and so on,” says Kath.

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“I think overall the feeling about iplicit is very good. It looks like it’s going to be a good system for us. The iplicit API team has been really responsive, iplicit support has been brilliant, our project manager and customer success person have been very helpful.

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“There’s a lot involved in putting in a new finance system but we got there. The feedback from staff is that they’re enjoying the system and are looking forward to the new reporting modules. The feeling is overall positive.”