Rapid expansion led Broker Network to look for a financial system which would allow them to maintain a series of separate businesses, but compare consolidated figures and comparative performances in real-time. PS Financials accounting software met this challenge, with its flexible functionality and ease of use.
Founded in 1994, Broker Network is an umbrella organisation which provides a range of advice and services to its membership of Insurance Brokers. These Member services include help with compliance, staffing, marketing and finance. The Network negotiates group deals on behalf of around 170 members, and employs some 400 staff over 90 sites in the UK.
The impetus for purchasing a new financial system came as a result of Broker Network's rapid growth, with over 20 businesses acquired or formed in the previous three years. To help them choose the most suitable replacement financial software Broker Network brought in Finance Systems Consultant Andy Taylor, a chartered accountant with 12 years experience of selecting and implementing financial software systems.
Existing software lacked the flexibility to analyse individual businesses
The existing Sage accounting software Broker Network used wasn't meeting its requirements to manage the finances of the new acquisitions separately, while maintaining the ability to view consolidated information and comparative performance. Andy comments:
"The company's existing system wasn't what they needed. I came in and realised almost immediately what the problems were. They were acquiring businesses all the time, but the existing Sage system required each acquisition to be set up as a new company. As a result, some areas of the organisation were set up as departments and others as divisions, and separate purchase ledgers were being run for each business - around 30 in total! All of these had to be managed and maintained individually. Further, trying to aggregate purchase transactions across the Group (for procurement purposes) was made difficult as each purchase ledger seemed to have set up different codes for the same supplier!"
"In addition, Sage would allow us to carry out either financial analysis by department or division, but not both. At the end of each month, all trial balances were exported into Excel, compared against the budget and any adjustments made back in Sage, so the month-end was becoming very time consuming as a process, and unwieldy. We wanted a system where adjustments arising from the budget comparison could be made 'off the cuff' in real time, based on up to date and accurate information."
One of the key requirements of new accounting software for Broker Network was that it must be able to retain the existing company structure (with separate purchase ledgers for each business), but have just one point of entry for supplier details. Although Andy had detailed knowledge of a number of financial software packages he was uncertain which systems would be able to handle this particular requirement:
"I used the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) website as a starting point to search for the new system, as all the software packages listed are ICAEW accredited, which means they meet rigorous quality and functionality criteria. From the ICAEW list, I came up with 11 possible suppliers and used the BASDA guidelines for selecting a financial software system by producing an RFI (Request for Information) for these suppliers to respond to."
Broker Network then selected four suppliers to shortlist, and viewed demonstrations from PS Financials, OpenAccounts (COA), Access Accounts and MS Dynamics GP.
"I found that Access and MS Dynamics GP both had good functionality although Access didn't completely meet all our criteria. MS Dynamics GP accounting core appeared slightly clunky in use and as Microsoft had recently bought into the mid-range market by buying a number of similar packages (which may combine into one product at some point) I didn't feel I could recommend that option without worrying it may cause future disruption," recalls Andy.
In line with the BASDA guidelines, a test environment was then set up — in fact two were established — as Broker Network could not decide between COA and PS Financials and decided to put both through their paces.
"We set up both packages on a laptop as if we were going with the product for real, (although only on a rough and ready basis with one day of consultant support from each company) and applied some test data to them using a selection of our accounting staff."
With user feedback Broker Network selected PS Financials
Having had the chance to experience both the systems at close hand, ultimately it was the users themselves who made the decision to go with PS Financials. Andy states:
"Broker Network decided to go with PS Financials because our users preferred the flexibility of the system and the screens offered by the system. We felt that COA's package was fairly clunky, it wasn't completely Windows-integrated and seemed to require lots of clicks to enter transaction data. In comparison, PS Financials came over as a very flexible system. To set up screens exactly as you want them you do have to do the initial design work yourself admittedly, but then you get exactly what you want from the system in terms of layout and functionality for each user. It's also a familiar 'Windows' environment."
Implementation of PS Financials was carried out to a very short timescale, with the software chosen at the end of September and the system going live at the beginning of December, a time frame of just 8 weeks. A consultant from PS Financials worked with Andy to bed the software in, with necessary data transferred across from the old Sage system easily.
"We chose not to bring sales and purchase ledgers across as there was little in the way of bad debt outstanding and much of the work had historically been done on spreadsheets and then uploaded. We also took the opportunity to remap our nominal codes as certain parts of the Sage system weren't ideal for adding new codes. The fixed assets were the most difficult to bring across as each had to be renumbered separately, but the actual data migration process was an easy one."
Rather than maintain a parallel run over several months, Broker Network chose to keep both systems running for a short period only, just so that sales and purchase ledger balances could be run down in Sage whilst reflecting the movements in PS Financials.
The PS Financials system at Broker Network Holdings has 10 current users in the main finance function, which is expected to rise to 15 in the next few years. Training has been done so far with users on a one-to-one basis because of the individual nature of their roles:
"We have asked people to specify what they want from the user screens so we can ensure they have them the way they want them", notes Andy. Demonstrating how user-oriented and flexible PS Financials is.
Multi-company journals proves a very useful feature
"The most popular feature for users so far has been the ability to post multi-company journals. For example, if one company in the group charges interest to another, you don't need to make both entries separately — if you are in one company, you can have transactions hit the other companies' accounts — this is handled automatically."
At a later date, Broker Network plans to implement the purchase register and procurement functionality, and a move towards distributed purchasing is also planned in the longer term.
With the new PS Financials system in place, the company is now looking at redesigning its internal accounting processes (which had been largely determined by the old software system) to make them more efficient, now they have the option to work how they want to. Andy comments:
"We are looking to reduce the timetable for the production of management accounts from day 13 to day 8 in the next few months. The main thing is ensuring that we have a robust system that will cope with the expansion the group is facing."
PS Financials 'points the way forward for financial software packages'
Andy concludes:
"Working with the PS Financials consultants has been a hugely successful process. All PS Financials consultants are accountants so they are completely clued up about what's needed."
"If I was to design an accounting system I would probably design something like PS Financials. I think other accounting systems will go the same way as PS Financials in future, because of its flexibility and the ability to analyse transactions for reporting purposes in a much more dynamic way than most accounting packages allow."
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