The experience with iplicit
“Irfan Chaudhary, the iplicit Senior Implementation Consultant who was assigned to us, is an absolute star,” says Michael.
“I’ve had some of the most positive interactions I’ve ever had with any form of software business. He was extremely knowledgeable and if he didn’t know something, he wouldn’t make it up or guess.
“The same goes for Adam Clark, Product Specialist.
“In a lot of software companies, you have the IT side and then separately you have the ‘system purpose’ side – in this case, the accountants. But with iplicit, the knowledge of both was very much integrated and that helped me to shape our system.
“I had to deal with having one less member of staff at the busiest time of year – with audit, Freshers Week and the accounting system change all happening at once – but not a single deadline was missed and there wasn’t a single hiccup with iplicit to hold up getting it running.
“Everyone's got used to it – and that's from the end users’ side as well, where we have budget managers getting used to actually signing off the invoices via the system.”
‘We’ve saved 30 hours a week already’
iplicit is easily saving the union’s finance team 30 hours a week, says Michael.
“We installed the system just as I’d had to lose half a full-time post from the team,” he says.
“We absorbed the 20 hours that person had been doing and on top of that, I could quite comfortably say we’ve saved another 10 hours a week. And we’re still in the bedding-in period.”
He has a host of favourite features in iplicit.
“I’m trying to make use of its importing function in every way I can,” he says.
“Possibly the best feature about the importer is that you can do a preview and undo things before you commit anything to the final system.
“In other systems, you can create a lot of confusion if you import something you didn’t really want to, or some other error creeps in, but with iplicit it’s never final until you commit. A lot of other systems don’t account for the human factor.
“There are still complete audit trails and the auditors will be very happy with the way I can present my numbers but iplicit has thought about the human entering the information.”
iplicit’s bank reconciliation features have saved “a good day or two a month”, says Michael.
“Previously it was all very manual, but iplicit’s automation can pick up about 90% of our transactions,” he adds.
“We have a purchasing consortium, so we get one statement a month to cover about 400 invoices. Now, I can import that in one quick click on iplicit, rather than type in each item and verify it individually. The same goes for a lot of the invoice generation for the nursery.
“I’ve also got to deal with payment reconciliation so I can import all my payments in one go.”
Michael is starting to make further time savings by using iplicit’s budgeting system and fixed asset module.
With so much work done by automation, the finance team have been able to concentrate their time and energy on the bigger picture.
“iplicit deals with mass information and the transactional side, enabling us to deal with more of the strategic side,” says Michael.
“It’s really helping us to make use of the data, rather than be caught up with data entry.”
Advice on upgrading
Switching finance systems can be daunting. Michael urges other organisations to review their existing processes and be open-minded about taking the opportunity to change them.
“In our sector, some unions drive up the number of users because they insist on including all their club and society presidents as team users, but those people don’t need to access the finance system every day,” he says.
“My biggest advice to anyone – in our sector in particular – is to take the politics and the old, dogmatic policies out of it.
“If you do that, I guarantee the company and the students will benefit from cost savings.”
You can find out more here about how iplicit is serving students’ unions – or get in touch for a demonstration.
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