iplicit is ‘a joy’, saving time and boosting efficiency at McIntosh Plant Hire

The challenge

 McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd needed a new accounting platform urgently. Its old vendor had given the company no option but to move from an on-premises system to a cloud version of its product – a prospect which came with a large price increase and a three-year commitment. 

The finance team knew there had to be a better option. Its accountancy firm, AAB, introduced the business to iplicit – and months later, McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd is seeing big time savings and efficiency gains. 

The finance tasks at McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd 

A team of six has a busy workload, serving McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd, three other companies and a partnership managed by the same directors and family members.   

There are around 300 purchase orders and 350 sales invoices to deal with each month, plus daily banking transactions. Timesheets are used to track the commitment of people and machinery to chargeable projects. Vehicles, heavy machinery and other fixed assets have to be accounted for and there are a lot of prepayments to calculate. 

Accountant Linda Reith says all these procedures required a lot of work in spreadsheets under its old accounting system, Access Dimensions. 

“Access told us we needed to move to the cloud. We’d have a three-year contract and the costs would increase dramatically. So we suddenly needed to do something quickly,” says Linda. 

“We’d known we’d have to eventually move to the cloud but we didn’t like the fact that our vendor was forcing us and we didn’t appreciate the cost or the lack of customer care."

The solution

McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd went back to its accountant, AAB, for advice and was introduced to iplicit. Meetings followed with Matt Lewns, Partner Manager for iplicit’s accountancy channel, and Guy Burton, iplicit Solutions Consultant. 

“They were so helpful from the word go. You were made to feel you were important and they wanted your business,” says Linda.  

“Matt and Guy were interested. They took the time to listen to what we needed. We’d had Access for about 20 years, so this was a chance to review everything and think about what we actually needed the system to do.” 

Linda and her team speak highly of iplicit’s implementation, training and support. 

“The trainers were very good and very patient,” she says. 

“The support is a world away from our previous vendor. All this confirmed that we’d made the right decision.” 

Linda Reith
Accountant at McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd

“When we moved on from implementation, we found the support team fantastic. They come back to us very quickly whenever we have any queries. 

“The support is a world away from our previous vendor. All this confirmed that we’d made the right decision.” 

 ‘iplicit is much more flexible’ 

McIntosh Plant Hire found iplicit infinitely more powerful and adaptable than its old software. 

“iplicit is a far more flexible system where changes can be easily made to invoices, banking and general ledger transactions,” says Linda. 

She anticipates substantial time savings from iplicit’s fixed assets module. “We have nearly 340 assets which includes 50 trucks, 50 trailers, plus vans and plant such as diggers and excavators as well as furniture, fixtures and fittings – and all the capitalisation and depreciation will be dealt with by the system,” she says. 

“We’ve already got the system dealing with our prepayments, such as the road fund licences and insurance for each of our vehicles. It’s brilliant that the system calculates all this for me, rather than me having to work it out manually. I just review the results to make sure I’m happy.  

“We have a huge number of insurance invoices, so the prepayment scheduler will seriously cut down the time I spend on this task.” 

“iplicit is a far more flexible system where changes can be easily made to invoices, banking and general ledger transactions.”

Linda Reith
Accountant at McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd

Favourite features 

Linda’s favourite feature in iplicit is its automated bank reconciliation.  

“In the past, we had to go into the bank account and go through all the entries manually,” she says.  

“I’ve got another favourite feature, which is the search facility.  You don’t have to know the code for a particular supplier or customer. You can just start typing a company name and it appears.”  

She also likes iplicit’s ability to keep multiple records open at the same time.  “It’s a huge bonus when you don’t have to close records and can just jump back and forth between views,” she says. 

“From our initial meeting with iplicit, the implementation process and now support, we have always found that iplicit sees our needs as important.”

Linda Reith
Accountant at McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd

Advice on changing systems 

Switching systems presented an opportunity to review McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd’s processes. Linda’s advice to other organisations would be to make the most of that opportunity. 

“The people on our team have all been here for between 10 and 30 years. We’re used to doing the same processes over and over again, so this was a chance to ask: Do we really need to do this particular thing? If we stopped, would anyone notice?  

“For example, we used to have timesheets coded for all the jobs that we were working on – not just the jobs that were chargeable to our customers, but the internal office jobs as well,” says Linda. 

“Now, we only enter the timesheets for those chargeable jobs, so there are maybe 10 a week instead of 60.” 

“iplicit is dedicated to providing an excellent service. The system and, especially, the staff have been a joy to work with.”  

Linda Reith
Accountant at McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd

‘It’s been a joy’  

McIntosh Plant Hire (Aberdeen) Ltd is expecting to see ever more efficiency gains from the change in systems. 

“From our initial meeting with iplicit, the implementation process and now support, we have always found that iplicit sees our needs as important,” says Linda. 

“iplicit is dedicated to providing an excellent service. The system and, especially, the staff have been a joy to work with.”  

• See iplicit for yourself by getting in touch for a demonstration.