Oasis Community Learning Case Study

Oasis Community Learning's academies get a flexible consolidated financial system

      With 12 academies Oasis Community Learning is one of the largest academy providers in the UK. The organisation needs a robust and consolidated accounting and purchasing system to support its continued growth, which is why it replaced its previous accounting system with PS Financials in 2007. Since then, Oasis Community Learning has been impressed with the flexibility PS Financials offers and the levels of support provided.

‘I’ve never come across a software company that will make a software change within two weeks. Most companies will say, “we’ll try and do it in the next upgrade”, and then never do.’

Ian Gough, Management Accountant, Oasis Community Learning

Listening to our customers

PS Financials listens to us and acts upon our requirements, so we can make ongoing improvements to our software. Management Accountant Ian Gough believes that PS Financials has become very knowledgeable about the academy sector, due to PS Financials being used by over a third of academies within the UK. Oasis Community Learning have worked closely with PS Financials to explain their needs and this has been reflected in recent developments to the software. In particular, they have noted that the new version of the PSF web portal is more focussed towards academy and school life than the previous version.

The flexibility to manage multiple academies

Ian believes that PS Financials suits academy providers because of its flexibility. The system allows multi-level structures where each academy can have its own analysis  which can easily be consolidated to provide an overall view for the organisation.  Analysis can be carried out by department, year, pupil or any cost centre, and up-to-date reports can be produced at any time. According to Ian, ‘one of the best things about the system is the internal reports we can produce. You can drill down infinitely until you get to the source transaction. The system also allows you to attach further information to nominal codes. We can attach lists and define where items fall into groups.  From a consolidation point of view, most systems couldn’t do this’.

PS Financials meets Oasis Community Learning’s needs for being both a charity and academy provider, with partial VAT and restricted funding handled easily.

Supporting users across the organisation

Oasis Community Learning has 35 users of PS Financials at organisation and academy level. They are predominantly financial staff but also include teachers who find the system straightforward to use. The web-based portal also makes it easy to use and users can access their own information from anywhere when they log into the Oasis network.

‘We have a good working relationship with PS Financials. They provide a very good helpdesk function and you can work closely with them, whereas with some providers you are just a name on a bit of paper.’

Ian Gough, Management Accountant, Oasis Community Learning

Saving time and effort

Oasis Community Learning have found that PS Financials saves the organisation time and effort as well as giving it the flexibility to manage its finances across multiple sites. Ian cites the ability to export accounting information as just one example of how the software does this. He says: ‘I’ve never come across an accounting package that can export accounting information straight to Excel in the way that PS Financials does. That alone saves us so much time when you need to do a quick analysis or report.’

Future plans

As the charity continues to grow, Ian can see the opportunities offered by additional facilities within the PS Financials system which are not currently being used: ‘There are a lot of tools which can be used for budget setting.  We currently input our budget over 12 months but might use these tools to do this automatically.  There is also the ability to  create 3-5 year budget plans­ it is very sophisticated.’

‘Would I recommend PS Financials to other academy providers? Yes ­ in fact I already have.’

Ian Gough, Management Accountant, Oasis Community Learning