Customer Story:
DEALT
Improving year-end auditing processes
Audits are notorious for being time-consuming and putting pressure on school finance teams, but they are essential for compliance and transparency. With the right systems in place, the time spent on compiling key documents can be reduced, leading to a more positive experience for staff, as well as making reporting and submitting accounts much quicker. David Myatt, Chief Financial Officer at Deal Education Alliance for Learning Trust (DEALT) explains more.
Access Education Finance
Access Education Budgets
Access Education People
Multi-Academy Trust
Comprising eight primary schools, DEALT is an exciting and unique Multi Academy Trust. With their unswerving commitment to integrity and transparency alongside a restless pursuit of excellence, DEALT ensures every child in their care is provided with a great education.
Before implementing the Access Finance and Budgeting software we were reliant on outdated and clunky processes. When we academised in April 2019 we had the option to implement something new and quicker, which was exciting.
The Access Finance and Budgeting software now presents our data in a more intuitive and user-friendly way.
I think that schools should be able to access data wherever and whenever it’s needed, rather than having to manually search through or stumble across it completely by chance. As a chief financial officer, I can manage permission levels to ensure that the right members of staff can access the required information. With our old system it was all or nothing, which created issues around data security and privacy.
Less stress, more time
The Access Finance and Budgeting software makes a huge difference to the auditing process as we can grant the auditors access to a ‘read only’ version of our system, via the cloud. Not only will this minimise the time auditors spend actually on site, but it will also make the entire process far less stressful for the trust.
Back in 2019, our annual audit took about 40 days and last year it was closer to 25. Next time around, having been using the Access system the full financial year, I’m anticipating that we’ll smash our 20 day target.
Teachers now also have a much clearer understanding of what their budget is and how much they have left to spend. Two years ago, they would have had to ask their headteacher, who would then speak to the finance team which was hugely inefficient and made forward planning difficult.
Full visibility in reporting and KPIs
We’ve been using Access People, and it’s already making a noticeable difference in the time we spend with processing data. By consolidating our HR processes into one system we now have full visibility of the entire trust, improving reporting and KPI analysis.
Staff can log in and download their payslips, access holiday requests and log overtime within just a few clicks. Previously this would have been done manually over email and it was incredibly inefficient.
Since adding the Access products we’ve been able to implement positive change and improve ways of working across the trust. As updates happen in real-time, teams can work from the same information so I’m confident that communication will also continue to improve.
