Customer Story: Education Learning Trust

Sam Finch knows what a high-performing finance function looks like. She has spent her career building them. When she joined Education Learning Trust as CFO last summer, she brought with her more than a decade of experience in school finance, a clear vision for what needed to change, and a system she trusted completely: Access Education Financial Management.

Education Learning Trust is a five-school trust: two large secondary schools and three primaries, spread across Greater Manchester. Formed just before the pandemic, it grew quickly. By the time Sam arrived, the finance function needed to grow with it.

What followed is a story about what becomes possible when the right person, the right tools, and the right support come together. In under a year, the trust has accurate management accounts, a central finance team that works with confidence, and headteachers who are actively engaged with their budgets. The trust has just signed for a further three years with Access, including Premier Customer Success, which Sam would not be without.

Sam has used Access since around 2017. She didn't just adopt it at one trust and stay put. She took it with her. When she moved to Frank Field Education Trust, she brought Access in. When she came to Education Learning Trust, she made sure it was central to her plans from the start.

That consistency is deliberate. In a sector where finance teams are small, budgets are tight, and the pressure to have accurate information is constant, Sam has found that Access does something rare: it makes complex financial management genuinely accessible, without stripping out the sophistication that senior leaders need.

"It's easy to use whether you're a school business manager or a CFO. You don't need to come in with a degree in accounting. But when you need high-level reports and real strategic insight, it gives you that too."

Sam's first priority was to make sure the team around her could use the system to its full potential. That meant bringing in Access Premier Customer Success, something she had invested in at previous trusts and was not prepared to be without.

Premier Customer Success gave the trust a dedicated account manager in Dave, a specialist Sam has worked with across multiple organisations and specifically requested when she joined. Dave came in for a structured day of training with the finance team, targeted precisely at what they needed: purchase orders, commitment profiling, contract management, year-end processes.

She also wrote a new finance policy, setting out delegated limits, authorisation structures, and clear guidance for using the system day to day. Access and the manual now sit side by side as the foundations of the trust's finance function.

The results were swift. Purchase order compliance improved dramatically, falling from an 85% non-order invoice rate to a position where committed spend is visible, accurate, and up to date. Management accounts that had been difficult to rely on are now something the whole leadership team can plan around.

"The best thing one of my staff said was: no question's a silly question. For people building their confidence with the system, that meant a lot."

Responsibility for financial accuracy has spread across the trust too, which is exactly what Sam wanted. At one of the trust's secondary schools, the cover supervisor now enters supply bookings directly into Access as commitments. Finance staff simply match the invoice when it arrives. Workload has reduced. Errors have dropped. And staff who once felt uncertain now feel in control.

Vacancy management has improved too. When a post becomes vacant at one of the trust's schools, the team is notified immediately, the budget is updated in real time, and the saving is visible straight away. It is a small process change with a meaningful impact on the accuracy of the overall picture.

The impact has been felt well beyond the central finance team. Five-year budget forecasting is now built on precise contract profiling rather than blanket assumptions. Each contract is treated individually, with its own uplift terms applied year by year. The cumulative accuracy that brings, over a three to five year horizon, is significant.

The contract register has been overhauled too. Profiling contracts properly prompted a wider review of what the trust was committed to and when. It surfaced a contract that had been renewed three years earlier but never reinstated in the budget. That kind of discovery, and the discipline that makes it possible, is what turns a finance function from reactive to strategic.

The Access Education governors' report has transformed how financial information reaches headteachers and governing boards. The Central Team Finance Manager uses it as the primary vehicle for communicating financial position to school leaders, many of whom found the subject difficult to engage with before. The shift has been tangible.

"We had an email from one of our headteachers after a budget-setting meeting. She said it was really productive and that she'd gained so much clarity. That's really powerful."

That email, unsolicited and straightforward, captures something important. Financial clarity isn't just a benefit for the finance team. It changes how leaders lead.

The year-end audit process has been transformed too. Education Learning Trust's external auditors log directly into Access to retrieve everything they need. Sam's team barely hears from them during audit week.

"I haven't heard from the audit team this week, and that's because they've got everything they need. They log in, pull it all off, and just get on with it."

Throughout all of it, Access Premier Customer Success has been the constant. Sam is unequivocal about its value.

"The amount of value I get out of that plan is tenfold. People see a price tag, but when you work back the hours of advice, the training sessions, the times you can fire off an email and get a methodology back, it's worth its weight in gold."

The relationship goes far beyond troubleshooting. It is a genuine professional partnership, built over years and multiple organisations. When Sam has a question, she emails Dave. When the team needs a year-end refresh, they book time with him. When something in the sector shifts and she wants to think it through, Dave is someone she can call.

Sam describes it using an analogy that puts the value of Premier Customer Success into sharp relief.

"It's like an IT contract. You won't just have your person, they might be surrounded by 30 people behind them. I see Premier Customer Success as an extension to our team. It's not just me with one brain. It's me with the knowledge of a whole organisation behind me. That's how I've always sold it."

That sense of extended capability matters deeply in a sector where finance teams are lean and the demands on them are not. Premier Customer Success doesn't just help with the system. It gives leaders like Sam the confidence to move quickly, decide well, and keep their team growing.

Sam has seen Access work across four different trusts. Here is what she says makes the difference.

• It's built for education, not accountants. Intuitive enough for finance assistants and budget holders, sophisticated enough for CFOs and finance directors. No accounting degree required.
• Real-time visibility of committed spend. Purchase orders, contract profiling and vacancy management mean your financial position is always current. Nothing arrives as a surprise.
• Forecasting with genuine precision. Individual contract uplift terms applied year by year, rather than a blanket percentage across the board. Your three to five year budget becomes a tool you can actually plan from.
• Reporting every audience understands. The governors' report and central budgets functionality mean the right information reaches trustees, headteachers and governing boards in a format that makes sense to them.
• Audit ready, all year round. External auditors log in directly and get what they need. Your team gets their time back.
• Premier Customer Success: an extension of your team. A dedicated account manager who knows your organisation, understands the pressures of school finance, and is there for methodology, year-end, strategy and everything in between. Not just a helpline. A partnership.

Education Learning Trust is only now beginning to explore further capability within Access. The ICFP module is next on the roadmap. The central budgets functionality continues to develop. And when Access delivers automated invoice matching, which Sam's team is keenly anticipating, it will complete a picture that is already close to exactly what she envisaged when she arrived.

A finance team operating with confidence, clarity and control. Exactly as it should be.

"I've had Access Education at four trusts now. I've never felt the need to leave, and that speaks for itself."
Sam Finch, CFO, Education Learning Trust

Financial clarity isn't just possible. For trusts like Education Learning Trust, it's already a reality.

Access Education Financial Management is part of the Access Education platform: one intelligent system connecting financial management, people management, teaching, and parental engagement through Access Evo. Data moves effortlessly, decisions happen faster, and complexity dissolves into clarity.

Start where it matters most, then expand as your needs evolve. Each solution delivers impact on its own. Together, they're unstoppable.

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