How iplicit will help Unit Hire scale as turnover grows by 600%

iplicit has been a big part of the growth story at Unit Hire, a business where turnover is six times what it was three years ago.

The company buys, sells and hires out shipping containers, as well as converting them into offices, canteens and garden workrooms among other uses.

“I think iplicit has definitely helped growth,” says the company’s Management Accountant, Ian Petherick.

“I know the mountain of time-consuming processes that go into putting the reports out on time so that the directors can make those important decisions about where you’re going next. It’s very smooth and easy to use iplicit for that.

“Three years ago, turnover was £1.5m and this year it’s expected to be £9m, so the work of the finance team is going to get much bigger, but iplicit will scale with us. The future here definitely looks rosy.”

How Unit Hire uses iplicit

Unit Hire has two bases, in Essex and Darlington, and a sister company that rents out self-storage space in shipping containers. Both companies are using iplicit.

“We have a separate billing system to deal with the hiring of the containers. Then we have to monitor which units are out on hire and which have been sold – so it’s all about stock in and out and the profit made,” says Ian.

“We moved to remote working back at the start of the pandemic and the world has changed so that we work from home when we need to. With iplicit, as long as you have a broadband connection at home, it’s nice and easy, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

Moving to iplicit

The business decided before Ian joined that it needed to upgrade from a finance system which was no longer meeting its needs.

Having decided to move to iplicit, the team were not impressed by the quote from their existing supplier for keeping access to their past data.

“The price was something like seven years of our existing software bills. I think we were quoted something in the region of £7,500. It was ridiculous,” says Ian.

“We were delighted we could migrate our old data into iplicit so we didn’t have to pay for a licence just to access that data.”

iplicit’s user experience and support

Ian joined Unit Hire on the same day its iplicit system went live.

“I had to get dispensation from my previous employer to join in training sessions with iplicit,” he said.

“There was some trepidation because obviously when you’re moving jobs, you want to hit the ground running and I had never seen this software package before.

“But iplicit’s ease of use is amazing. It feels modern, as though it’s a Microsoft Office product. You almost feel you’ve used it before, even if you’ve never seen it before.

“It’s been designed right from the bottom up to be user-friendly. It’s as if someone has said ‘How do I do bank rec? What’s the easiest way?’ and that’s how a lot of the tools have been built.

“It feels like a newly made system, but as though you’ve weeded out all the bad stuff you get with finance systems.”

He has seen Unit Hire well looked after by iplicit’s customer support team.

“I can’t fault the staff. If there ever are any issues, the iplicit support team are always on it and I never have to wait for something to be resolved,” he adds.

Favourite feature of iplicit

The live integration between iplicit and Excel has been Ian’s favourite feature of the system.

“I have my own set of reporting portfolios and I use the Excel functionality where it does the calculations with data from iplicit. I just hit ‘control’ and F9 and it automatically refreshes what’s in the system,” he says.

“I have to report to the directors and at month-end, when it gets busy, there are a lot of last-minute journal entries. I would hate to be in the position where I'm constantly having to update reports. However, with iplicit, you can just click on a button, the data refreshes and the reports are up to date. That is a massive timesaver for me.”

The future with iplicit

As the business grows, Ian expects to take more advantage of iplicit’s other time-saving features, including its intercompany consolidation and its automated bank reconciliation.

“I think we’ll be building in the approval workflows, the expenses tools and things like that,” he says.

“Eventually we’ll get to the size where we need these things. But we’ll still need something that’s easy to use and iplicit is very easy to pick up and use. It will scale with us. It’s future-proofed.”

Learn more

Find out more about iplicit’s multi company accounting software or arrange a demonstration.

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