Partner Article

Charity selects Exchequer software to improve financial reporting

Finance system to enable St Giles Trust to increase visibility of project income and costs

St Giles Trust, a UK charity dedicated to providing specialist services to help equip ex-offenders for life beyond prison, has selected a cloud-based financial management system from Advanced Exchequer (Advanced) to improve management reporting and visibility of its award-winning projects. The Exchequer solution, which will also be hosted by Advanced, will go live in May 2015.

St Giles Trust is a growing charity with a turnover of £7 million and employs 160 staff and 85 volunteers at offices in London, Peterborough Leeds, Ipswich and Cardiff. Its services include pioneering advice work in prisons, housing support, vocational training and guidance on employment opportunities, which assisted over 15,000 people in 2014.

The charity also runs the multi award-winning SOS Gangs Project which helps transform the lives of ex-offenders and troubled young people, including some of the most prolific gang members in the capital. The SOS project was launched in 2006 and is London’s largest gangs intervention scheme, with a team of 23 full-time employees and 10 volunteers.

Malcolm Walker, Assistant CEO at St Giles Trust, explains, “We employ small teams who can be running up to 50 projects simultaneously, each with their own cost centre. As we have grown, our finance system has become increasingly restrictive in providing swift management reports and reliable project costing information, wasting valuable time and resources.

“Of the four suppliers we evaluated, Advanced stood out based on the knowledge of its team, the advanced reporting capabilities of its software and its strong reputation in the charity sector.”

Exchequer will increase visibility of the charity’s activity and resource utilisation to improve financial control and transparency. Project managers can quickly view a complete history of a project including income, expenditure and associated costs to assist with budgeting and forecasting decisions. The system will also eliminate the need for complex manual calculations, such as invoice generation, thus boosting productivity.

In addition, the solution will automate several administrative processes to improve the quality and efficiency of St Giles Trust’s reporting procedures. Powerful drill-down functionality will make it quicker and easier to analyse financial data and produce customised information for stakeholders, auditors and the senior management team relating to all aspects of its expenditure. Walker comments, “Exchequer’s ability to seamlessly link to source financial data will significantly streamline and enhance the quality of our reporting. The system is also easy to use, particularly for non-finance users, which will help them to better monitor budgets and costs so that funds continue to be invested wisely.

“Furthermore, the system will help to reduce the volume of queries into the finance team so we can continuously enhance our services.”

Exchequer is part of Advanced Business Solutions, a division of Advanced Computer Software Group plc. Advanced is a leading supplier of software and IT services to the health, care and business services sectors. In 2014, the Group won Tech Company of the Year in PwC’s UK Tech Awards and ranked in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50, which recognises the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK.

-ENDS-

Notes to Editor

About St Giles Trust www.stgilestrust.org.uk St Giles Trust is a mid-sized, UK-based charity that works primarily with ex-offenders to help with training and equipping them for life beyond prison. It aims to help break the cycle of prison, crime and disadvantage and create safer communities by supporting people to change their lives.

The charity’s services put reformed ex-offenders at the heart of the solution, training them to use their skills and first-hand experience to help others through peer-led support. Around one-third of St Giles Trust’s staff are ex-offenders who now support others.

About Exchequer www.exchequer.com Exchequer’s multi-award-winning, fully integrated accounting and business software helps organisations improve the way they manage and operate their business, delivering significant time and cost savings by automating everyday tasks.

Flexible and easy to use, with powerful functionality built-in throughout, Exchequer supports all aspects of your organisation providing unrivalled analysis, exceptional management reporting and productivity enhancing tools. Exchequer improves customers’ productivity by 47%.

Award successes include ‘Financial Software Provider of the Year’ in the Real Finance/CBI FDs’ Excellence Awards, winning more times than any other software provider, ‘Best rated accounting product catering for businesses in the medium range’ in an authoritative survey by the ICAEW, and 100% user recommendation by Charity Finance for three years running. Exchequer is part of Advanced Business Solutions, a division of Advanced Computer Software Group plc.

Exchequer 0844 815 5600 exchequer@advancedcomputersoftware.com www.exchequer.com

Press contacts: Angela Mycock and Ben Carey, Advanced Computer Software Group pr@advancedcomputersoftware.com +44(0)1625 856 513 or 07887 415 232

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Advanced .