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CalculatorReporting time cut from an entire week to minutes

Time savings (1)Freed the finance team to focus on higher-level work

Efficiency ProcessEasier strategic planning for the future

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Sector
Estate agency

Number of iplicit users 
3

Objectives
Automate manual tasks, better reporting and support growth

Previous System 
Sage 50

Website 
richardjames.uk

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The challenge

Richard James is an expanding estate agency and lettings agency, headquartered in Swindon, with multiple offices and more than a dozen legal entities.  

“We’d been looking for quite a while for a system that would speed up our work,” says Jonathan O’Sullivan, Accounts Assistant at Richard James. 

“We’ve got a lot of different offices in Swindon which are all separate legal entities, plus lettings offices and a sales business in Brighton. So that’s a lot of different legal entities and a lot of intercompany transactions. 

“Our finance manager and our founder, Richard James, were both keen to find a more modern system. Moore Kingston Smith talked to us about our needs and introduced us to iplicit.” 

Simon Woodhams, Software Advisory Manager at Moore Kingston Smith (MKS), said: “Richard James is a long-standing client that was on Sage desktop software. It really needed a solution that was more modern and could keep up with its growth. 

“With around 15 legal entities to account for, there were a lot of intercompany transactions to deal with. There were a lot of spending approvals to handle and there were many people that needed to see financial reports. That meant consolidation was a big part of the work – and the team was doing that in Excel.  

The solution

“We considered whether QuickBooks would have been the right fit, but although that could have been made to work after a fashion, it wouldn’t have met all the company’s current needs, let alone equipped the business for further growth. 

“Under QuickBooks, the finance team would still have been doing most of the time-consuming consolidation work in Excel that it was doing under the old system. Fortunately, the team at Richard James was ready to consider a solution that would really future proof the business.”   

“One of the crucial factors was being able to speed up the processes involved in those intercompany transactions,” says Jonathan. 

Simon adds: “Jonathan does most of the bookkeeping tasks and you can imagine how frustrating it was. To handle intercompany transactions, he’d need to log out of one system, remember what intercompany transaction he’d just been handling, then log into another account and make sure he was applying the other side of the transaction correctly. The efficiencies around consolidation were a huge factor.” 

Another area where efficiency could be drastically improved was reporting. 

“Richard James’s finance manager told us how the team spent a week producing particular reports,” says Simon. 

“We were able to say: ‘Well, what if you could do that at the press of a button?’ That’s the moment when we could see she was convinced.”

“Under QuickBooks, the finance team would still have been doing most of the time-consuming consolidation work in Excel that it was doing under the old system. Fortunately, the team at Richard James was ready to consider a solution that would really future proof the business.”   

Simon Woodhams
Software Advisory Manager at Moore Kingston Smith

Implementing iplicit 

The team at Richard James was so impressed by iplicit that the company committed quickly. 

“They had a demo and loved it,” says Simon. “In fact, we did the demo on the Wednesday and they signed up on the Friday. 

“The whole approach from Richard James was: If we’re going to invest in moving systems, we’ve got to see benefits from doing it.”

Richard James understood how much iplicit would help improve its workflows, even deciding to go live half-way through a financial year. 

“The team understood that there’s no point in picking up the current system and putting it into a new platform in exactly the same way. You’d just be moving your problems from one system to another," says Simon.

Helen Goldbourne, iplicit’s Customer and Partner Success Manager, ran a “build meeting”, after which MKS created a sandbox environment in which the Richard James staff could train. User acceptance testing went smoothly and the company went live with iplicit on schedule.

Jonathan says: “The implementation went very well. The training with Phil Humphries of MKS was very helpful. He and Simon were available whenever we needed to jump on a call or ask any questions. They’ve since handed us over to iplicit support and the level of service we get from them has been good. 

“Phil helped us import some opening balances from our own system, so we started iplicit with all the data from the year to date.”

 

"With our Sage system, we had to log into the bank to see what was happening there and reconcile it with the finance system. Now, iplicit pulls in all that information automatically and I just review the matches it suggests." 

Jonathan O’Sullivan
Accounts Assistant at Richard James

Using iplicit

“The company saw a big difference straight away,” says Simon of the move to iplicit. “With the old desktop system, they didn’t have any of the time-saving functionality that I think sizeable organisations should be able to take for granted. For example, they didn’t have OCR (optical character recognition) to capture receipts, or integration with bank feeds.” 

Jonathan explains: “There are so many intercompany transactions to take care of, with one company paying for something and charging it back to the others. iplicit has made that easier, so that’s really been able to speed up some of the processes. 

“For example, each office has to pay for its part of our bill from Rightmove. One company pays for it and charges it out, splitting it among all the others. With iplicit, as soon as you split it out, it shows up in the accounts of the right legal entities as an expense straight away, so the P&L is live and accurate."

Finance reports that used to take a week to produce can be in the hands of the group’s decision makers at the press of a button – while the finance team has released valuable time for higher-level work.  

“What’s more, all the data from the different legal entities is in one system," Jonathan. "There’s no more logging in and out of different accounts, doing a bit of work in one before logging into the next one. That’s made things much quicker.” 

“This is a business that’s all about growth. As it grows, the team is looking at what the future structure of the business should look like. They simply wouldn’t be able to do that properly without the quality of data they’re getting from iplicit.”    

Simon Woodhams
Software Advisory Manager at Moore Kingston Smith

Prepayments, bank reconciliation and other iplicit advantages 

“There is so much more I can do with the system,” says Jonathan. 

“For example, the automated invoices. They are emailed in, I just select a couple of options in menus, and they’re posted straight away. 

“The bank feeds have been really useful, enabling automated bank reconciliation. With our Sage system, we had to log into the bank to see what was happening there and reconcile it with the finance system. Now, iplicit pulls in all that information automatically and I just review the matches it suggests.  

“When it comes to managing cashflow, I can view aged debtors and aged creditors across all entities in one place.”  

One sophisticated iplicit feature that is saving Richard James a great deal of time is the system's ability to handle prepayments. 

“We deal with prepayments for things like rent and subscriptions.  Previously, we’d have posted an invoice and then had to do a manual adjustment to the journal once a month,” says Jonathan. 

“Now, when I post an invoice, I can tell iplicit how to spread the amount involved and over what period.” 

He says he was able to get up to speed with the system quickly.  

“When we had the first demo of iplicit, I remember saying ‘How long is it going to take me before I’m able to find my way around it like you’re showing me?’ But just four months after implementation, I feel I know my way around it very well,” he says. 

“When it comes to reporting, all the information is there, live, at the click of a button. You can see a complete picture of the business easily. There’s really impressive functionality in iplicit.”

Jonathan O’Sullivan
Accounts Assistant at Richard James

Providing better information 

The move to iplicit has provided better data to both the Richard James leadership and the company’s accountants. 

“When it comes to reporting, all the information is there, live, at the click of a button,” says Jonathan.  

“You can see a complete picture of the business and you can download that and do what you like with it. There’s really impressive functionality in iplicit.” 

For MKS, the change has meant it is able to improve its advice to the client. 

“As the accountants, iplicit has allowed us to provide them with a much better service,” says Simon.  

“We can just log in and see the data – and as advisers, we can serve the company better because we’re seeing the data in real time, rather than having to ask them to do a Sage backup and send it to us – or having to travel to Swindon to fetch it. 

“This is a business that’s all about growth. As it grows, the team is looking at what the future structure of the business should look like. They simply wouldn’t be able to do that properly without the quality of data they’re getting from iplicit.” 

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