PS Financials provides Save the Children with all the financial support it needs to meet the complex and ever-changing financial reporting requirements of a large charity, thanks to its intuitive and flexible set up.
The UK's leading international children's charity, Save the Children, has projects in more than 70 countries worldwide supporting children who suffer from poverty, disease, injustice and violence. With an income of over £100m per annum, the charity works with children to get their voices heard and help them to develop their potential, and grow into positive adults. Save the Children also campaigns strongly to change attitudes, policies and laws in order to put an end to child poverty and discrimination.
Modern charities face financial reporting requirements as stringent as those imposed on business. For a high-profile charity like Save the Children, it is essential for the finance function to be able to show financial transparency and accountability to its donors. At the same time, a charity needs to be able to monitor its expenditure closely to ensure that as much income as possible is spent on the cause, rather than administrative costs.
Swift installation facilitated by close collaboration between PS Financials and Save the Children
Save the Children moved to replace its existing AS/400-based software system, as the system was inefficient and nearing the end of its useful life. PS Financials was chosen above other short-listed options for its ability to provide automatic, flexible reporting - something which the previous system was unable to provide. Multi-dimensional analysis was also a must, so that the finance team could interrogate information at any level from an individual project up to the charity as a whole.
Implementation was fast, with the process taking less than six months, and the system live on schedule. The timescale demanded a short burst of intensive effort on the part of both Save the Children and PS Financials, and Save the Children IT and financial staff collaborated closely with PS Financials specialists to complete implementation tasks.
The new PS Financials system was rolled out to users in several phases. The initial roll-out to the head office finance function was followed by a link-up to the three UK regional offices, which have their own finance functions. Users are able to access the central system remotely. Budget holders were subsequently given read-only access to financial data, allowing them to track budgets in real-time instead of waiting for month-end reports. There are now over 200 users of the system, covering both finance staff and budget holders.
PS Financials provides real-time reporting across the charity
The production of timely and accurate management accounting information has been a key focus for Save the Children in recent years. In addition to its head office accounting responsibilities, Save the Children's head office finance function provides support for projects in the UK and overseas. Programme offices outside the UK operate a variety of software systems which feed summary data into PS Financials, allowing the production of consolidated reports for the organisation as a whole.
Installing PS Financials has made it much easier for Save the Children to monitor expenditure at project level, as the system allows users to drill-down through successive levels of information to find exactly the detail they require. PS Financials accounting software is designed so that a reporting hierarchy can easily be set up to group data at various levels.
To allow for multi-level reporting, Save the Children's chart of accounts has been designed to combine a field coding structure with a different code structure. Separate elements of the code are used to reflect their management and financial reporting structure. SORP reports, for example, are generated automatically by Cognos interrogating PS Financials.
PS Financials has led to many efficiencies at the charity
Financial Accountant Robin Brown joined Save The Children after implementation, and has seen how PS Financials is able to generate efficiencies for the charity.
"Although I was already familiar with PS Financials when I came to Save the Children, there have been a number of specific benefits to using the system here. The ability to report directly from an operational database makes it easier to analyse management information. Being able to produce most of our SORP* and VAT reporting automatically means that our year-end processing is an efficient and straightforward process, and the system handles partial exemption easily".
Robin is also impressed with the system's ease of use. "The fact that we can easily customise the input screens to match our existing forms has helped to make the system very user-friendly", he comments.
PS Financials interfaces easily with other related finance systems in the field and in head office. These include Care, the organisation's donor management system, and there is now a daily interface between the two systems to transfer fundraising information. Information is also imported monthly from Sun and other field systems. A new Field Management System for grants is planned, and that will also integrate with PS Financials once it is in place.
PS Financials continues to adapt to meet Save the Children's changing requirements
From the word "go", PS Financials has proved responsive to Save the Children's needs. For instance, when the team identified a requirement outside of the scope of the base system, PS Financials developed the necessary additional functionality and put it into the core solution at the earliest opportunity. This was made possible by Save The Children's proactive working relationship with PS Financials. "When we hit a problem they help us find a solution. They provide the consultancy that we need, when we need it", notes Robin.
In recent years, Save the Children has worked closely with PS Financials to ensure that the system in place meets their ever-changing needs and requirements. There has been ongoing enhancement of the system, for example, with the addition of a fixed asset register. Robin also comments that changes have been made to the reporting structure within the organisation.
"The reporting wasn't set up in a good way organisationally, but it has now been significantly improved with the addition of Vision functionality. We are also now using multi-currency reporting, mainly for dealing with bank accounts and balance sheet controls", he adds.
One possible future development is for PS Financials to be rolled out to the organisation's 50 field offices spread around the world. For the present, Robin is very happy with the way the system is supporting Save the Children in its work. "We have a lot of financial reporting to deal with, but PS Financials manages all of this easily and effectively", comments Robin.
*Statement of Recommended Practice on Accounting and Reporting by Charities: a reporting standard created by the Charities Commission to establish the type of information that should be made available to donors and other stakeholders.
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