Sage Intacct
Growing Academy Trust gets scalability and flexibility with Sage Intacct
A Customer Success Story
Project background
The client - David Ross Education Trust
Founded in 2007, the David Ross Education Trust (DRET) is a diverse network of academies dedicated to becoming one of the top-performing academy trusts in England. Recognised as one of 11 System Leaders for education across the country, DRET oversees 35 primary and secondary schools located in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, and London.
By providing a world-class academic education, covering primary, secondary and special schools, the trust empowers pupils to reach their full potential.
Growing complexity
The challenge
DRET continues to grow, with more schools wanting to join the trust, attracted by the strategy of delivering academic excellence whilst embracing enrichment and citizenship.
According to DRET’s Chief Executive Officer Stuart Burns, a key part of the trust’s strategy is to ensure that “Finances are carefully and sustainably managed to support our education strategy … and help schools execute their business in a slick, time-efficient manner whilst achieving good value for money“.
To realise this ambition, DRET needed to invest in a new financial management solution; one that could support a growing organisation with multiple schools, numerous budget holders and fund accounting requirements. The trust required a system that could provide more efficiency and offer enhanced reporting flexibility whilst maintaining strict financial controls.
The key challenge was finding technology that could manage the intricacies of fund accounting required by a charitable trust, while also accommodating the needs of multiple sites and stakeholders. The financial team required more sophisticated reporting tools that could provide detailed insights across schools without overwhelming them with manual tasks or a complicated workflow. The trust also needed a system that could ensure compliance with strict financial regulations, particularly around the approval of purchase orders.
As their contract with their previous provider neared its end, DRET recognised that they needed a more scalable, flexible and easy-to-implement solution to support their expanding and more complex operations.
The process
Solutions' approach
Solutions for Accounting consultants quickly identified that Sage Intacct would be the perfect software to support DRET’s ambitions.
The trust’s finance team were particularly impressed with the system’s flexibility, multi-dimensional reporting capabilities and its ability to create dashboards tailored to their specific needs.
One standout feature of Sage Intacct for DRET was its seamless integration with Yooz for purchasing automation. This would allow DRET to implement a more tailored approval workflow, ensuring greater control and auditability. It would also provide the trust with much-needed transparency, showing real-time tracking of purchase orders and invoices.
Additionally, Sage Intacct would provide DRET with a new, centralised system for posting income. Previously, income postings were handled by administrators at individual schools, leading to inconsistencies and inefficiencies. Bulk invoice uploads and integrated bank reconciliation would further streamline these operations, saving time and reducing the risk of manual errors.
By partnering with Solutions for Accounting, a leading UK Sage partner in the Education space, DRET users quickly became confident that their requirements would be met. The Solutions team brought extensive experience and a strong technical understanding of the education sector’s financial challenges. Solutions’ expertise in integration using Sage Intacct’s powerful API also meant that DRET could adopt a ‘best of breed’ approach to the system without having to heavily customise the software—an important factor for long-term sustainability and maintenance.
Centralised data
The outcome
Since implementing Sage Intacct with the support of Solutions for Accounting, DRET has experienced a range of benefits that have transformed their financial operations. Among the most notable improvements have been the centralisation of income postings, bulk invoice uploads and direct bank reconciliations.
Another significant change has been the improved reporting functionality. With Sage Intacct, the trust can now create custom reports and utilise dashboards to provide budget holders with visual representation of their financial performance, in a timely manner. This flexibility combined with the multi-dimensional reporting has enabled DRET to gain deeper insights into their financial data (both centrally across the MAT, and school-by-school) which is now much easier to manage and interpret.
Efficiency improvements extended to their VAT return process as well. Previously, VAT returns were a manual, multi-day effort. With Sage Intacct’s integration into the Making Tax Digital (MTD) portal, underpinned by Sage Intacct’s flexibility of expenditure reporting, the trust can now complete VAT returns in a matter of hours which frees up resources for other strategic tasks.
Another particularly valued feature is how Sage Intacct, when paired with Yooz, offers DRET enhanced control over their chart of accounts. With the ability to manage purchase coding outside of their core accounting structure, the trust can keep their chart of accounts lean and efficient, while still meeting the needs of different departments.
This has eliminated the risk of over-complicating the financial coding system, offering both flexibility and control.
In addition to the successful Yooz integration, DRET have further improved their financial management processes by going live with IMP Planner, a sector-specific budgeting tool. The two-way integration between Sage Intacct and IMP Planner frequently updates and allows DRET to seamlessly transfer actual financial data into IMP Planner and import budget data back into Intacct. Recognising that no two academy trusts are alike, Solutions for Accounting continues to work closely with DRET, ensuring the integration meets their unique requirements and delivers precise, actionable insights to support their financial planning and management.
The partnership with Solutions for Accounting has been a key factor in DRET’s success with Sage Intacct. The trust was impressed with the responsiveness, technical expertise and customer service provided by Solutions, giving them confidence in their technology partner choice. By providing tailored guidance and a proactive approach, Solutions ensured that DRET could maximise the benefits of Sage Intacct.
The trust is now well-positioned for future growth, with Sage Intacct providing the scalability and flexibility needed to accommodate new schools as they are added. The system’s cloud-based infrastructure allows DRET to add new entities without any disruption to existing processes, ensuring that financial management can keep pace with the trust’s ambitions.
After the implementation, we asked if they would recommend Solutions for Accounting.
"I absolutely would. I've been very pleased with their responsiveness, knowledge and technical capability. Right from the outset, we were able to work with a team who really understood the challenges we faced. They listened to us carefully and gave us the confidence that they could deliver a powerful solution with great customer service."
Jane Spencer, CFO, David Ross Education Trust
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